The Skybound Sea

TWENTY-SIX

The last footfall came heavily, crunching upon the sand as Gariath reached the other end of the ring. He stared at his feet, sunk slightly into the moist earth, before looking back over his shoulder.

Fires burned at the foot of the stairs. The coral burned brighter than wood; he hadn’t thought it would, but he supposed that was the least weird thing about Jaga. In ever-increasing numbers, more warbands of Shen continued to emerge from the forest. From here, they seemed like tiny lights, fallen stars burning out on the earth.

He didn’t know how many paces he had taken, how far he had come. He was sure he had started counting, but after a while, as the sand went on and on, he stopped thinking about how long it was he walked and instead wondered about this earth.

And how much blood it had drank.

He had heard the stories.

This is where it happened, the Shen had uttered. They uttered everything. They never laughed or whispered or wept. Here, in this ring. This was where she held court. This was where she fell. She was driven back, into the mountain to be sealed away forever.

The Rhega, they had uttered, not said, were there, too. They fought. They died. Their blood spilled in oceans. When they lay, they lay with Shen. Where they lay, so lay a thousand corpses that went with them. Why they lay. .

He had never heard the end of that story. They had never finished.

Rhega was a word they uttered with the reverence reserved for spirits, as though they-he-weren’t actually real. And when they uttered, there was an envy to their voice, a nostalgic resentment for those who had died and left them behind.

On the day it had happened, there was said to have been carnage. The Shen said that. Uttered it. He had asked Mahalar; the elder Shen had said nothing. He had asked Shalake; the warwatcher had simply smiled. He had no one else to ask. There were no ghosts here.

And so he stared out over the ring and tried to imagine it.

He saw fragments of a vision: the bells of Ulbecetonth’s chosen shattered and mingled into heaps of scrap along with siege engines and statues of mortal armies, titanic corpses of demons forming a soil of flesh watered by blood for the rest of the mortal flowers to wither and die in. He could see red.

So much red. So many unmoving bodies.

It was a vast field. It had taken him a long time to cross it. There must have been a lot of them. They must have lain screaming, cursing, howling to mothers and reaching out to brothers lying beside them and fathers bleeding out and refusing to die.

He could see that.

But he could smell nothing.

Ktamgi had reeked of memory. Teji stank of regret. And Jaga smelled like nothing. No death. No laments. Not even a faded aroma of a long-ago tear, shed into the earth and waiting for him to find it.

There was no smell of memory here.

There were no ghosts here.

There were no Rhega here.

Except for him. And the ones in the stories the Shen uttered.

And could he trust them? Could he bring himself to believe them? To see the Rhega walking here, living here, fighting alongside the Shen, alongside humans, as countless as the stars?

He looked to the night sky for reference and snorted. The analogy might have been easier to grasp had he stars to which he could actually compare. There were lights up there, to be certain: purple ones, yellow ones, even the occasional pale blue glow that might have been mistaken for a star.

But then they shifted. The fish carrying the lights in their bellies and brows twisted and swam from one another, countless and impossible to keep track of.

“We have no stars here.”

To see Shalake standing nearby was no particular surprise. The lizardman had been by Gariath’s side since he had arrived, always the one to tell the stories, always the one to utter. He now stood by Gariath’s side again and stared up into the sky.

“The sky and sea are one here. There’s no room for anything else.” He traced a slow-moving, blue-glowing fish with his claw as it swam across the sky. “And these fish only emerge in the shadow of the mountain.”

Their gazes shifted to the vast stone monument standing stolidly at the other end of the ring. Haloed by storm clouds, the blue rivers veining it bright and glistening against the many firelights below, it stood with an earthen weariness. It had seen much in its time: many deaths, many bodies.

The blood spilled before its stone eyes tomorrow would be nothing particularly worth noting.

“It’s a mistake,” Shalake grunted. “We shouldn’t be fighting here. The Shen way is to strike quickly from the sea and from the shadows. We should be back there.”

He gestured behind them. The kelp forest rose in great masses of twisting, writhing stalks, cleaved neatly down the middle by the stone road leading into the ring.

“Our best chance of success comes from fighting in the forest.”

“Scared?” Gariath asked, unsmiling.

“Intelligent,” Shalake answered him. “There’s no way for the longfaces to move a force as big as the humans claim they have, but for the road. We fight them there at dawn, we paint the sun red with their blood and ours. Their dead are fed to the sharks, ours are sent back to the sea.”

Gariath stared at the kelp forest and wondered if it was that simple. Had he ever spoken so casually of throwing himself to his death? Did he ever have the same sliver of an excited whine that crept into Shalake’s voice when he said the word “blood”?

Perhaps he wondered too loudly. When he looked back, Shalake had an intent gaze fixed upon him.

“Do you agree?” Shalake asked.

“The humans. . think a lot,” Gariath said. “Especially the little one. They spend a lot of time in their heads talking to themselves and wondering how they can stay alive. If they think it’s better to fight here. .”

“You trust them?”

The dragonman hesitated before speaking. “The longfaces are strong. I’ve fought them. I’ve killed them.”

“Then they can die.”

“They have no concept of ‘death.’ They look at blood spilling out of their bodies and don’t blink. They see their others lying cold on the ground and walk on top of their bodies. They die only when you convince them that they can die.”

The smile that creased Shalake’s face was morbid enough without the amorous gleam in his eye.

“And there will be many,” he whispered in a shuddering voice.

Gariath furrowed his eyeridges at the lizardman. “Yeah. A lot.”

“The fight will be a story unto itself.”

“It might not come to that. As strong as they are, it’s the males that are the real danger. The little ones control the others and tell them what to do. If one of them dies, this whole thing becomes simpler.”

“The pointy-eared thing’s plan.” The wistful joy in Shalake’s voice dropped back into a growl. “I don’t trust it, her or the ones that think it’s a good idea.”

“Mahalar did.”

“Mahalar is our elder. Even if we must respect his decisions, I am the warwatcher. I say there should be more warriors in the forest. We can’t entrust it to a stupid, pink-skinned thing like her.”

“Some of her plans are stupid,” Gariath said, nodding.

“The last one almost got you eaten by an Akaneed, you said.”

“Almost,” Gariath replied. “And it brought me to where the Rhega lived.”

“And died,” Shalake was quick to respond. He swept his hands out across the ring. “Atop the demons, atop the humans, atop the steel and the blood and even the Shen. They fought and they died and they bled until the dead were as countless as the stars.”

Gariath looked out over the ring and repeated to himself.

“As countless as the stars.”

He tried to imagine it.

He found he couldn’t.

“And we may join them.” Shalake’s voice grew excited. “In a way that only we know how, in a glory that only we know. The humans, they will scream and weep and beg. But we will know what it is that meets us on the other side.”

“I already know what it is,” Gariath muttered. He had talked to enough ghosts to know.

“Because you are Rhega,” Shalake said. “And we are Shen. We are the same, you and I. To the humans, it will always be a mystery, something to be feared. As will you. Have they never looked at you as we have? Have they never stood here with you and spoke to you like a true creature?”

Gariath tried to remember the last time they had spoken like that, without fear or terror in their voices.

“No,” Shalake said. “They are weak things, Rhega. You are amongst the Shen now. All we have is each other. And our glorious death.”

While not quite certain how lizardman anatomy worked, Gariath dreaded to think what was going on beneath Shalake’s loincloth, given the excited quaver in his voice.

The lizardman positively beamed from beneath his scales. His eyes were alight with glorious stories. His heart thundered with memory. His smile glistened with bloodlust reflected in every tooth.

And none of it was his.

That story was someone’s else. That memory died on the battlefield. That bloodlust belonged somewhere far away and long ago.

That face Shalake wore, his face, belonged to someone who had earned it, not someone who had dug it out of an earth glutted on stories and blood.

It belonged to a Rhega.

“I’m leaving,” he grunted.

“Rest well. Eat well,” Shalake said. “Tomorrow, we die well and see our ancestors.”

“Yeah.”

Gariath trudged across the sands, head bowed, feet heavy.

He didn’t bother to count the steps.

Dreadaeleon chewed absently on the blackened fish, not sure whether his mouth was open or not. He downed a swig of water from a skin, heedless of the belch that followed. He wasn’t even aware that he seemed to have stopped blinking. The entirety of his attention was focused on his dinner companions.

And the Shen shared his sentiment. Seven yellow eyes, bright against the fire between them, stared back at him. Two of them, the ones whose lids drooped just slightly and were angled down at the boy, belonged to the towering Shen called Jenaji. Four more belonged to the two Shen flanking him, each of them bearing more black stripes than red as warpaint-something Dreadaeleon began to suspect indicated a role of leadership, based on the way they sat apart from the rest.

The seventh belonged to the lanky thing called Yaike, a Shen who never seemed to leave his bow behind and never seemed to stop glaring. Admittedly, it was difficult to glare with only one eye, but damn if Yaike wasn’t trying his hardest to.

Slowly, as though unaware that they were staring back, Dreadaeleon leaned over to the woman beside him and, in what he thought was a whisper, asked.

“Is this as incredibly weird as it feels, or is it just me?”

Asper made a pointed note of keeping her attentions focused only on the fish skewer in her hands. Dreadaeleon acted like he didn’t notice her discomfort.

“I mean, waiting to die, sitting next to a bunch of lizards that were ready to help us along with that up until a gang of netherlings decided to come and now they’re sitting here with us, also waiting to die and-”

“We speak your language, you know,” Jenaji suddenly interjected.

“Oh,” Dreadaeleon said, blinking. “Well, you hadn’t said anything all night, so I assumed only a few-”

“All warwatchers learn your tongue. It is part of our duty.” Jenaji leaned back. “I was using the silence to think.”

“About what?”

“The battle.”

“What about it?”

“Does that really need to be answered?”

Dreadaeleon took another bite of fish and nodded.

“About all my brothers, all my sisters, all the Shen I’ve lived with,” Jenaji replied with a sigh, “all for this battle. It takes silence to try and think why we do what we do in the name of duty.”

“What about the others?”

Jenaji glanced at the Shen seated around him and shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t like you.”

“Shiat-ay,” Yaike grunted.

“Sorry. Yaike wants it to be known that he definitely doesn’t like you.”

“Why didn’t he tell me himself? Can’t he speak the tongue?”

“He can. He just doesn’t like to.”

“Na-ah,” Yaike suddenly interjected. “Atta-wah, siat-nai, no-wah-ah tanna Shen.”

“What was that?” Asper asked, finally curious enough to look up.

“He said it’s a Shen’s duty to speak the Shen’s language,” Jenaji replied, plucking another fish skewer from the fire and taking a bite of it. “That’s not what we were told, but Yaike is the kind of Shen who likes to do a lot of things that aren’t necessary.”

“Well, he’s got a point, doesn’t he?” Asper suggested. “You. . warwatchers, is it? You’re the leaders of your. .” She frowned, searching for the words. “Tribes? Clan?”

“Shen.”

“Leaders of the Shen, right,” she said. “Shouldn’t it fall to you to protect your people’s heritage? Your culture? I mean, you speak for your people, don’t you?”

“The Shen have not spoken in some time,” Jenaji replied. “We have only a few words to say a few things. We use your tongue only to ask questions of you before we kill you. A warwatcher does not lead through words or through life.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Jenaji reached up and patted the bow on his back.

“My heritage.”

He traced the warpaint on his body, a line for each life he had taken.

“My culture.”

He stomped a foot on the earth, old and dead.

“My people.”

“So, everything about you revolves around death,” Asper said, voice souring.

“All the important things.”

“No medicine? No arts? No traditions?”

“We have those. To fight longer, to celebrate the kill, to remember the dead.”

“How can a society live on those?”

“When the mortal armies freed us from Ulbecetonth, we took our oaths. The lives of our fathers, our brothers, our sons; all were offered up to guard Ulbecetonth. We do not live. We serve the oaths.”

“But what about your children? What about your trade? What about villages, religion, stories?”

“Our children are born dead. Our trade is death. Our villages are graveyards, we worship there and we pluck our stories from the cold, dead earth.”

“So. . what? You just sit here, killing people until you die yourself?”

The Shen, save for Jenaji, nodded firmly in response.

“Huh,” Dreadaeleon chimed in. “That’s stupid.”

Only Jenaji nodded.

Asper elbowed Dread firmly, adding a scolding glare to accompany it. Dreadaeleon shot her one back, save with a little more confusion, as he rubbed his side.

“Well, it is,” he protested.

Yaike leaned forward, muttered something to the Shen in their own tongue, and they rose in reply.

“Shalake calls,” Jenaji said curtly. “We go.”

“Is there a plan, then?” Asper called after him as he and the other Shen stalked away. “Do we know what we’re going to do?”

“We know what we’re going to do,” Jenaji said. “Do what humans do and try to survive.”

“But why?” she demanded, rising to her feet. “We can do more together than we can apart, surely.” The Shen said nothing as they turned and stalked away. She looked around for support. “Right?”

Dreadaeleon shrugged, took another bite of fish. Asper watched Jenaji as he disappeared into the crowd of Shen.

In silence.

There was something to it, though. It was not a serene silence of meditation, nor a tense, fearful silence. It was a heavy, weary silence, like there were words to say, words that had been rehearsed and repeated so many times no one saw much of a point in reiterating them.

She wasn’t sure what they were. They probably didn’t involve the words “goodbye,” “love,” or “forever.” “Kill,” “die,” and “through the rectum,” maybe.

She surveyed the assembled Shen and frowned.

“How many could there possibly be?”

“A hundred,” Dreadaeleon replied. “Probably about a hundred and a half by now.”

“A third of the longfaces’ numbers.” Asper’s frown deepened with every word muttered. “That explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Have you honestly not been paying attention?” she asked, frustrated. “To how they’re all walking around, acting like it’s their last day alive?”

“It probably is.” Dreadaeleon’s cavalier attitude was not at all diminished through a mouthful of fish. “I mean, they’re going up against twice their number in berserker warrior women led by weird, magic-spewing males, with rocks and sticks.” He belched. “Sharp rocks and sticks, admittedly, but still.”

“We’ve gone up against the same and survived.”

“Not this many. And the times we’ve fought Sheraptus have not gone well for us.”

She wondered, idly, if she would ever stop shuddering at the mention of that name.

“Kataria’s plan. .” she began hesitantly.

“If it works, glorious,” Dreadaeleon replied sharply. “If not-and I have several solid reasons why it should not-then the Shen seem a little wiser.” He stared into the fire for a moment. “Personally, I admire their certainty.”

“So you’re saying they’re right to act like we’re all going to die?” she snapped. “We should all lie down and wait for the longfaces to come and-”

“I’m saying that some outcomes are more likely than others. Some things, no matter how. .” He caught himself, swallowing something. “No matter how much we might want them, just aren’t likely to occur.” His face twitched. “And sometimes, death is a more comforting thought than the alternative.”

And with that, the boy assumed the same silence as the Shen, as deep, as dark, as lamentable. To stare at him caused her to ache. Whatever words she might offer him he had rehearsed, repeated a thousand times to himself and found them not worth bothering with once again.

And so he sat.

And so she stared.

“Well, this looks a tad uncomfortable,” a voice said from nearby.

Denaos stood at the edge of the fire, a rucksack slung over one shoulder and a rather pained expression painted across his face.

“Where’ve you been?” Asper asked.

“Are you quite sure you want to ask me that? I’d really hate to get in the middle of you nurturing your philosophical erections.”

She looked and spoke flatly at him. “So, can you just not answer questions normally or. .”

“Fine, if you’re going to be that way,” Denaos muttered, hefting off the rucksack and emptying it onto the sand. “At my insistence, our scaly friends have seen fit to allow us to look at their stockpiles to see if there’s anything we can use.”

“They have stockpiles?” Dreadaeleon asked, looking surprised. “But not pants?”

“Well, the reef catches a lot of boats, some lost, some searching for the island,” Denaos said, sifting through the contents. “The Shen come, pick off the survivors, loot them for metal, food, that sort of thing.”

“Anything they can use to kill more people and sink other ships,” Asper said, voice souring.

Denaos plucked up a stout, curved blade from the stockpile. “Just so.”

“What’s this?” she asked.

“A sword, moron.”

He tossed the blade to Asper, who caught it with only miminal stumbling and bleeding. She winced at the cut, sucking her finger as she inspected the weapon. A short, ugly little thing, thin and curved like a cleaver instead of a proper sword.

“Why?”

“Look, if you keep asking stupid questions, you can’t really blame me for my answers,” Denaos said with a sigh. “Clearly, tomorrow, what with being fraught with danger and death-” he paused and cast a look at Dreadaeleon, “-certain death, anyway, you’ll need something to defend yourself.”

“Yeah, I get that, but-”

“That’s a handy one, see.” Denaos gestured as he spoke. “It’s short, meant for getting in close. You use it to strike at soft parts.” He pointed two fingers, pressed them beneath his chin. “Thrust that thing into their neck, like so, it’s near instant.”

“And this is supposed to help against. . what, three-hundred-odd females?”

“And males.”

The intent of his voice met with the intensity of his stare and she knew what he meant.

In his eyes was a dreadful promise that, if they should fall tomorrow, if the Shen should collapse and the netherlings overrun them, if they should come to her with chains and the intent of delivering her to their Master. .

The blade, indeed, would save her.

She understood. She swallowed that knowledge in a dry, queasy breath and nodded at him, understanding. A frown creased his face, like he had hoped she might not have.

“Is that. . a jar?” Dreadaeleon asked, leaning forward.

The rogue plucked up the small glass container. “Kataria wanted it. Had to dig through a mountain of crap to find it.”

“So her master plan to save us. . involves a jar,” Dreadaeleon said, rubbing his temples. “Why do we keep listening to her?”

“Because Lenk does,” Denaos replied. “For obvious reasons.”

“What reasons?”

“Obvious ones.”

“Which ones?”

The rogue quirked a brow. “You didn’t catch it?”

“Catch what?”

“The tension in her stomach? The bead of sweat running down his temple? The faint but unmistakable odor of fear, shame, and day-old fish?”

The boy shook his head, slack-jawed. Asper blanched. The rogue shrugged.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“What? What?” The boy leaned forward. “What is it you’re getting at? What did they do? What-” Though it seemed as though to stop that line of questioning would break his neck, something else caught his attention. “Where did you get that?”

“That” turned out to be something out of place with the rest of the equipment: a single stone, fragmented and decayed, attached to a black iron necklace. Dreadaeleon let it dangle before him, inspecting it carefully.

“I took it from that netherling riding the. . thing.”

“Sikkhun.”

“Whatever.” Denaos reached out a hand to the boy. “Give it back.”

“Why do you want it?” Asper asked.

“Because throughout this whole damn episode, I haven’t gotten a single pretty thing. I took it, it’s mine.”

Dreadaeleon, without looking at him, tucked it away into a pocket of his coat. The rogue shot him a look of offense and shoved his various contents back into the rucksack.

“Fine, then. But if we find some kind of stupid book or something you want, I’m taking it.” He hefted it over his shoulder and sneered at the boy. “And I’m going to wipe with it.” He trudged away, pausing to lean obscenely close to the boy. “In front of you.”

The rogue left, presumably to dispense the rest of his deliveries. Asper cast a glance at him before turning to follow.

“I need to. . talk to him about something.”

“Of course,” Dreadaeleon muttered as she hurried away.

When he was certain she wouldn’t notice him, he turned and scowled at her.

He watched her as she walked away without looking back at him, so brazenly strutting up to Denaos, laying a hand upon his shoulder. He could see her silhouetted by the firelight, drawing closer to the tall man, looking up at him. Her eyes were flashing in the light, bright and wet and-

They’re doing it, you know.

The thought came suddenly and unpleasantly unbidden. And like an itch that grew into a rash that grew in leprosy, it festered there.

Right in front of you, like they don’t even care you’re here-because of you, I might add. You saved them-again-from the netherlings, from Bralston. You’re the one who knows magic and they haven’t even thought to ask your advice. No, instead they ask the shict because she smells like fish or something. That moron Denaos didn’t even think he might have something here.

He pulled the stone from his pocket and studied it. To all appearances, it seemed to be just a chunk of rock on a chain.

But is it? Did Denaos have something here?

Well, possibly not. It looks like just a piece of rock. But there’s no sense in being stupid about this. Rocks on chains are not something I trust netherlings with, considering what we’ve seen.

The stones, yes?

The red ones, right.

The ones that could achieve limitless power by avoiding the price-

Transferring. Transferring the price.

Apologies. The ones that could take your illness away from you. The ones that could make you the strongest, the most powerful, the most-

One moment. . am I talking to myself or is there someone else there?

He shook his head violently, throwing the thoughts from his head like gnats. He turned, teeth clenched and scowling at the pale figure standing behind him. Greenhair stared back impassively, glistening against the fire, a slight smile upon her lips.

“Damn it, stop doing that!” the boy demanded angrily.

“Apologies, lorekeeper.”

“Oh, good. At least you’re sorry.” He rolled his eyes. “What need have I for things like sanctity of thoughts when I have the apologies of sea-tramps?”

“I merely intended to-”

“Ah, good, because for a moment there I thought all I was going to get from you was apologies, invasion of thoughts, and convenient betrayals that sell me and my friends to perversile longfaced lunatics. But so long as I get intentions, I’m fine.”

“There’s no need to be-”

“There is every need.” Dreadaeleon held up a single finger. “You helped us once. Just once in a series of mishaps that have led us to nearly being killed and, in those moments when we’re not, you’re in my head, telling me things I don’t want to hear. You may have helped us out at Komga, you may have kept the Shen from killing us, but that’s no reason to trust you.”

“Reason and trust are squabbling siblings, often disagreeing,” the siren replied as calmly as though she hadn’t had a litany of accusations leveled against her. “That which demands trust needs no reason, that which possesses reason does not always require trust.”

Riddle-speak and cryptic gibberings. Dreadaeleon drew a sigh inward. But the logic is at least a little sound.

Thank you.

“I said stop that,” Dreadaeleon snapped. “I suspect you had a point in coming to me beyond making me hate my own tremendous brain.”

“A point, an offer, a promise.” Her eyebrows raised a hair’s breadth. “You are going to die tomorrow.”

“And is that a point or a promise?”

“Both, if a plan is not formulated.”

“Kataria has one.”

“I have doubts in her abilities. As do you. As does everyone. The thought echoes inside their heads, loud and screeching, begging for someone to draw upon a vaster intellect, a stronger knowledge.”

Watch yourself, old man, he cautioned himself mentally. The flattery is only slightly less subtle than that step she’s taking toward you. . that thigh sliding out of her silk. . that glistening, porcelain thigh. . He shook his head, forced his eyes back upon hers. You should protest, tell her she’s not going to get to you like that.

His eyes flickered downward. The silk rode dangerously upon her hip, as though just one more movement might send it slithering down her body completely.

Then again, maybe it’s enough that you know and that you don’t act on it, right?

“The Shen are strong, it is true, but the longfaces are stronger, more numerous, their powers unlimited.” Her smile was slight, suggestive, edged with just a hint of greed. “As yours could be.”

While he had been rendered speechless by many things ranging from a well-placed barb from Denaos to that one time Asper bent over a bit too far, rarely had Dreadaeleon been rendered thoughtless. And while he could certainly guess at what the siren was suggesting, he couldn’t quite bring himself to think of the specifics, of the implications.

Of the cost.

“No,” was the sole word he could manage.

“I have seen him, lorekeeper. I have watched him. He presumes the world, and all in it, bows to him as his warriors do. That is why your friend’s plan will fail. He cannot comprehend of a world that allows him to die.”

“No.”

“But the crown. . he covets it. He wears it constantly. He fears its loss. I have seen him remove it. I know it can be taken from him-”

“No.”

“-and given to another-”

“NO.”

“-that they might wield what he does.”

“ENOUGH!”

His roar, shrill as it was, drew attention from the encircling Shen who, at a glare from the siren, returned to the business of sharpening weapons and fletching arrows.

“Do you hear yourself?” Dreadaeleon demanded. “Do you know what you’re suggesting?”

“I know the crown gives power.”

“And do you know where it comes from?”

She nodded, solemnly.

“And do you know that it’s heresy in the eyes of the Venarium?”

“I know it’s necessary in the eyes of the Sea Mother and the world,” Greenhair replied firmly. “A world that breaks beneath our feet as Ulbecetonth begins to claw her way free from that dark place she was sent.”

“And I’m to stop it with the lives of. .” He laughed, slightly incredulous. “I didn’t even count how many were in that furnace, how many more there might be, how many they spent like kindling to keep their powers running far beyond the point they ever should.”

“As powerful as they are, you are more so. You have the vision, the drive. If only your limits were as removed as theirs are.”

“The stones transfer limitations. The price is still paid, but by someone else.”

“And with that burden no longer yours to bear, you could-”

“LOOK AT THEM.” He swept an arm out over the Shen. “Do you see how they look at you? With reverence? With awe? And you say I should sacrifice their kinsmen? Living beings who speak your name like it’s to be respected, people who don’t know that you’re saying I should eat them alive to commit heresy.”

“I say you should sacrifice some,” Greenhair said, voice raising a quaver.

“And when some isn’t enough? When we need more?”

“It will not come to that.”

“You can’t know that. It’s too high a price to pay to save just a few.”

“To save everyone,” she all but snarled. “Are you deluded with the idea that Ulbecetonth’s threat is contained to this island? The demons are returning. If Ulbecetonth breaks free, she will drown the world, return people to oblivion for the sake of making her children more comfortable. If the longfaces prevail tomorrow, they will deliver this world to darker hands still. You could stop them both if only you lacked-”

“A conscience?”

“Limits.”

For the first time, the porcelain of her face cracked, the melody of her voice broke. She became a creature of desperate stares, bared teeth, sweat-slick temples and urgent, pleading whispers. A greedy, hungry, weeping mortal thing.

“I know you. I know your thoughts. I know what you want, I know what you would do to get it and I know the dark places you don’t dare to tread and they simply do not exist. Your only fear is that they won’t respect you, that you won’t be strong enough to make a difference, that you can’t do what you need to to save her.”

Dreadaeleon felt his eyelid tremble. Somehow the word “her” on the siren’s lips sounded a vulgar thing.

“But you can,” Greenhair said, nodding vigorously. “And I can make it happen. I can give you the power to save her, to save yourself, to save the world. You will die tomorrow, lorekeeper, and she and all of them with you unless you take this power when I offer it to you.”

Dreadaeleon stared at her a moment. That thoughtlessness that had possessed him earlier vanished for but a single moment. And for a single moment, she saw something inside his head, something big and bright and beautiful.

And it made her smile.

And it made him feel sick.

“If, indeed, we’re all going to die tomorrow,” Dreadaeleon said calmly, “then I won’t give everyone the added problem of knowing you’ve suggested what you have. But if it’s over and you and I are both still alive, I will eagerly endeavor to remedy that.”

He turned.

“We are done,” he said.

He walked.

“Your thoughts suggest differently,” she called after him.

He did not stop.

More than anything, it was how horribly candid she was being that irritated Lenk.

She dipped another two fingers into the mixture of ash, water, and dye ground into an ugly, dark-red paste. She drew two lines upon her left cheek, complimenting the ones upon her right and the solid bar of red across her eyes. It matched the stripes encircling her arms, the tiny slashes running along the tops of her ears, the curving barbs running down the sides of her midriff.

She leaned over the edge of the stone bridge that ran over the vast, circular pool below. She stared at her own reflection, checking the application of her paint. Satisfied, she rose back up, dipped another two fingers in, and resumed her work.

As though preparing to go die was a perfectly normal thing.

“For the record,” Lenk said from the other edge of the bridge, “I think this is completely stupid and you’re completely stupid for doing it.”

“Your objection has been noted,” she replied as she drew a single red line from her lower lip to her chin. “And once I’m done here, I will be more than happy to reassure you that it is, in fact, you who are stupid.” She dabbed her fingers again. “And then kick you in the groin.”

“You don’t see the idiocy in this? Painting yourself to be as inconspicuous as a bipedal, wounded raccoon and calling it camouflage?”

“Ordinarily, this would be a poor choice of camouflage,” she said, checking herself in the pool once again. “And, if you can tell me that there’s anything at all ordinary about a forest made out of coral through which fish fly like birds, I’ll gladly stay behind.”

“I misspoke,” Lenk said. “What’s idiotic is the fact that you’re going out there to try and shoot a man who can stop arrows with his brain.”

“Mind,” Kataria corrected. “If he stops arrows with his mind, that’s a problem. If he stops them with his brain, that solves my problem.”

“But-”

“I have an idea.” Kataria whirled on him, narrowing her eyes and baring her teeth. “Let’s you and I just pretend for a moment that I’m actually smarter than a monkey and have already thought about how dangerous this is and how scared I am of doing it and that I’m trying very, very hard not to think about what Sheraptus does to people and what he did to Asper and what he might do to me and then let’s pretend you stop sitting there and telling me how dangerous this is before I pretend to put an arrow through your eye socket just so I can have a moment to tell myself this needs to be done so no one else has to die. How about we do that?”

When she had finished talking she was breathing hard through her nostrils, her lips pressed together to keep from trembling as much as her eyes were as she locked them onto him.

And he was silent.

“It’s not like we have a lot of options,” Kataria said, returning to painting herself. “It has to be this way.”

“I liked Shalake’s idea of attacking Sheraptus through the forest.”

“And then when he realizes something’s up, about the time the arrows start flying, he starts shooting fire. A forest on fire is a death trap, Lenk, one that will waste warriors we need here.” She drew in a long, slow breath. “No. One warrior, one shot is all that’s needed. Right in his neck. Before he knows it. Then I run.” She nodded to herself. “One shot. In his neck. Before he knows it. Then I run.”

She repeated each word, enunciating each syllable carefully until it became mantra, repeating the mantra until it became a deal with some god listening from far, far away.

She was fragile, if only at that moment, if only unwilling to admit it to herself or to him. And so, instead of speaking what he was thinking, he kept it in his head.

There has to be another way, he thought. I mean, Shalake knows the forests. He can find a place that. . doesn’t burn. . in a forest. Okay, maybe she has a point. But there’s got to be another way. There’s clearly no way to win this, right?

It took a moment for him to remember that no one would be answering him this time.

There’s always retreat, he conceded to himself.

“You ever notice how easily we run away?”

It wasn’t the first time he had suspected her ears might just be big enough to hear what he was thinking. She stared into her own reflection, a solemn look upon her face.

“I mean, it’s not like we’re cowards or anything. . or not all the time, anyway. We run when it’s practical, when we’re outmatched or in danger or something.” She looked out from the top of the stairs, out over Jaga and to its distant shores. “We could probably figure a way out of this, if we wanted to; a way to run away and let the Shen fight it out and hope that everything works out all right.”

She glanced at him.

“You’ve probably thought out a few.”

Kill a Shen and steal their boat, kill Hongwe and steal his boat, kill enough Shen and possibly Hongwe to strap them together to make a boat out of flesh and then flee using a sail made out of their skin.

“It hasn’t been on my mind,” he said simply.

“Either way, I like that you haven’t brought it up.”

“And why is that?”

“A couple reasons,” she said, shrugging. “I guess there are some things you can’t run from. I tried.” She looked back at her reflection, her face covered in a red deep enough to be blood. “I tried hard.”

“And was it worth it?”

She looked at him. And did nothing else but look.

“This seems like the sort of thing we can’t run from,” she said. “The sort of thing we shouldn’t try to run from.” She held out a hand. “Demons rising from below. Netherlings coming out to get them. Neither one of them has a problem with us dying. We don’t stop them both, a lot more people die.”

“We’ve seen a lot of people die,” Lenk said. “Killed a lot of them ourselves.”

“There’s got to be a reason for it,” she said. “Beyond money and survival. There’s got to be a good reason for doing what we did here, even if we haven’t done it yet. Because if it is all about the money. .”

She didn’t finish the thought with words. Her frown did it well enough for her.

It was hard to see her hurt. So he looked away. It was harder to look at the other end of the bridge, opposite the top of the stairs, and the stone door ensconced in the mountain’s face.

A simple slab set impassably within a frame hewn of granite stood seven feet within the face of the mountain. The image of Ulbecetonth was carved as a mantle atop it, hands extended from the mountain’s face in benevolence. The rivers that wept from the mountain’s crown turned to thin trickles here, a thousand tiny tears shed every moment to empty into the pool below.

This. This rock. This rock within a rock, and all its tiny, weepy tears, was what they were going to fight for tomorrow.

What people would die for.

“Death hasn’t bothered you before.”

“Well, maybe it does, now. I know it does, you.”

“I was actually feeling pretty okay with just getting on my skin-ship and leaving.”

“Your skin. .” She stopped herself from pursuing a line of conversation too stupid to bear. “If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have come here in the first place. We had a hundred chances to leave, to take an easier job with better pay, but you chose to follow the tome all this way.”

“I didn’t, no. Something else made me come. Something in my head. It wasn’t bothered by however many people could die. I think it got a little giddy at the prospect, in fact. But I didn’t come here for them. I came here for it.”

“And you could have resisted it, like you have before. But you’re here, with me.”

“And the demons. And the netherlings. And the Shen.”

“And me,” she repeated. “But if you still want to run away, this is your last chance.” She clicked her tongue, looked up at the shifting stars overhead. “But if, just once, you want to do something that might be worth not running from. . well, I guess this is also your last chance.”

He turned from her gaze, sighing as he leaned onto his knees.

“I’m just having a hard time seeing the point in it all. We kill the netherlings, then what? Ulbecetonth is still under there.”

“Then we kill her, too.” She sneered. “I said we can’t solve this by running away. Violence is still a good answer.”

“How do we kill her, then? Whatever was in me, it killed demons. It kept me alive. Without it, I’m-”

“Not crazy,” she interrupted, edging over to him. “Not insane. Not listening to anyone but you. Everything else you’ve done has been for some voice in your head, some dream that haunted you. But now. .”

She lay a hand upon his shoulder, gave it a gentle squeeze, and smiled.

“Now, whatever you do tomorrow, you do for yourself.”

He returned the smile, hoping she would think the tears forming at the corners of his eyes were the result of overwhelming emotion and not because she was currently squeezing a hunk of decaying, pus-weeping flesh that was his shoulder.

She rose to her feet. He took a moment to swallow a scream and followed her. They walked to the edge of the stairs together and were caught between stars. Beneath them, the fires of the Shen continued to burn as the lizardmen continued to work in silence. Above them, the fish brimming with the lights of their bodies continued to dance and sway in the shadow of the mountain.

“There.” Kataria pointed out over the distance, where the road slipped from the vast circle of sand and disappeared into the coral forest. “That’s where I’ll do it.”

“You sound awfully confident.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, her grin gleaming with her canines. “I’m me.”

“It might take more than fancy new arrows to kill him, you know.”

“Ah, yes.” She plucked her weapons up, stringing them across her shoulder. She took a single arrow from the quiver, a long, black-shafted thing with a nasty-looking barbed head. “Ravensdown fletching, barbed heads that can’t be pulled out without causing excessive bleeding.” She batted her eyelashes at him mockingly. “How did you know?”

“I just saw it in the Shen stockpile and thought of you,” he replied with a shrug and a smile. “You like them, I take it.”

He wasn’t sure if she was trying to appear amorous, seductive, or maybe a little hungry, but her gaze was hard, unwavering, and more than a little predatory as it ran up and down him.

“If we had more time, I’d convince you.” She slipped the arrow back in the quiver. “But I’ve got to go get my jar and get into position.”

He chose not to ask about the jar.

“I suppose I should tell you something deep and profound before you leave, shouldn’t I?” he asked.

She looked him over and gestured with her chin. “Go ahead, then.”

He drew in a sharp breath and nodded. “Ever since I was young-”

He made it about that far before she seized him by his collar, pulling him closer to her. Fragile as anything else about her was, the firmness of her body as she drew him up against her and pressed her lips to his was not. His arms found her tense, taut, trembling beneath him.

He felt as though he held a precarious grip on a tall mountain with nothing but emptiness beneath him. And when it ended, when she pulled away, he felt as though he fell.

“It was going to be boring, anyway,” she said, smiling as she wiped a bit of warpaint from his lips and reapplied it to hers. “Stay alive.”

“You, too,” he said, watching her as she traipsed away and down the stairs. After a moment, he called out after her. “If you don’t return, I just want you to-”

“Gods, I get it, Lenk!” she snarled back. “Riffid, if I knew you were going to get like this, I would have just let Inqalle kill us both.”

He glanced to the bridge, saw one of the many stone fragments broken from its edges. He resisted the urge to wing one of them at her head as she trotted down the stairs, if only because his shoulder was currently in agony.

Agony became searing pain in a matter of a few short breaths and one decidedly unmasculine squeal. He could feel his skin breaking, dying beneath his tunic, he could feel the blood and disease weeping from it. He peeled out of the garment before more than a few spatters of red could stain it.

He threw himself to the edge of the bridge, only narrowly keeping himself from tumbling into the water as he strained to scoop up a precious handful. He had only a moment to notice how it tingled unpleasantly upon his skin. When he splashed it onto his shoulder, though, he had more time to appreciate just how painful it was to feel the cold chill of the water upon the blackening rot of his wound.

And more than enough time to try not to cry like a little girl.

He could see his face contorted in the rippling reflections below, the screwed-up agony distorted into something even worse as he swallowed his screams, let his tears fall into the pool and lie on top of it, like they weren’t good enough to simply blend in with the rest of the water.

He shook, brushed, clawed the water from his wound. It fell upon the stones, gathered together, slid off the bridge to smother his tears and rejoin the pool.

“The water will not soothe you.”

Had he not been close to crying, he might have had the wit to ask how Mahalar had appeared at the end of the bridge and what he was doing there. But the elder Shen’s comings and goings and the very intent way with which he stared at Lenk from behind his hood were, at that moment, not the weirdest thing about him.

“It does not remember you.”

The Shen rose to his feet, shambled to edge of the bridge and leaned over, casually letting a hand dangle several fingers’ lengths above the water.

And, like a cat pleased to see its master, the water rose to the Shen. In liquid tendrils, it reached out from the pool to caress his fingers, running water over the rotted skin and exposed carpals of his hand.

Lenk cringed; this seemed like the sort of thing he would regret asking. Still. .

“How?”

“It was there. Ages ago. And so was I.” He pointed a bony finger to the storm clouds encircling the mountain. “From there.”

“Rain doesn’t do. . that,” Lenk pointed out.

“Rain touches the earth, is drank, is gone.” Mahalar bobbed his head. “Some of this water touches the earth. It flows beneath the mountain. You saw it in the chasm.”

Lenk nodded. He recalled the vast tunnel from which he and Kataria had emerged, brimming with inky black water, stretching into a dark void.

“Those dark places run beneath the mountain. The water there remembers nothing but darkness. . and her. It drowns. It kills. This water. .” He stroked the liquid tendrils, which caressed his hand adoringly. “This water touches no ground. It stays between heaven and earth.”

He drew in a breath and let it out in a cloud of dust that settled upon the water. The liquid shrank from it, wary of something earthen.

“The blood of the Sea Mother,” Mahalar said. “Too pure for mortals.”

“So, that makes you. . what?” Lenk asked.

“Very, very old.”

A sneer came over Mahalar’s face. He clenched his fist so hard the exposed bones cracked with the effort. The water trembled as though scolded and slid away from his hand.

“She chose this as her seat, to defy the Sea Mother. And we chose it as her prison for the same reason. This water remembers her. It remembers what she did.”

He extended his fingers to the water once more. They obliged, warily, reaching up to touch the exposed bone claws of his worn tips.

“They called us slaves from this water. Us, the children of the Sea Mother. And when we no longer called them masters, we sent them back to it. It remembers them, when they did not look like the demons they are now. It remembers them when they were beautiful and wicked. It remembers the stones we tied to their feet when we hurled them in and sent them into the water.”

He sighed wearily, closing his dull, amber eyes.

“It remembers when they rose up again.”

“As the Abysmyths,” Lenk muttered.

“We called them ‘enemy.’ As did the mortal armies. And we fought them together.”

“I’ve heard it said that memory is all that really kills a demon.”

“Memory shapes everything. The sky and sea of Jaga no longer remember what it means to be separate.” He swept a hand to the fish swimming through the night sky overhead. “The land no longer remembers my name, I have been around so long. But water remembers everything. .”

He tapped a slender bone claw against the surface. A ripple echoed across the water, tearing the reflections of themselves and of the dancing stars into pieces and swallowing them whole.

When all light was gone, all that remained was something vast and black, something deep and dreadful.

A hole.

A hole stretching into infinite void beneath the water.

“How. .” he began, staring down over the edge, “how deep does it go?”

“All the way to hell,” Mahalar replied casually.

It was difficult to tell if the elder Shen was being cryptic or literal. Lenk decided he didn’t want to know.

The young man leaned over farther, as if to see if there were something that would tell him. Some trace of light not yet swallowed, some fragment of reflection to tell him that this was still water. He found nothing.

Or rather, he saw nothing.

From the void, from the water, smothered by void, muffled by liquid, he could hear it. It was something soft, something trembling, something too quiet and too pure and too old to know what language was or what words were or anything beyond a simple, mournful melody.

A song. Just for him.

It pained him to hear it. He could feel it, in his skull and in his blood and seeping into his shoulder. He winced, touching a hand to the throbbing mess of flesh.

“Ask it to help you.”

Lenk turned to the elder Shen who stared at him with the same patient intent one watches a corpse to see if they’re really dead.

“Call out to it,” the lizardman said.

“I don’t know-”

“You do,” Mahalar insisted. “I’ve seen it. Back when they walked with us, against the demons. They talked to it in the darkness, they cried out to it when the blood was so thick they could barely speak for fear of choking on it.”

The elder Shen lowered his gaze, unblinking.

“And it answered them. Always.”

“It,” Lenk said quietly, “is not that simple.”

“Can you call it?”

“Do you know what it feels like?”

“I asked-”

“And so did I,” Lenk said. “Do you know what it feels like?”

“I do not.”

“I guess you wouldn’t. Do you want to know?”

“I do not.”

Lenk stared at him for a moment before looking back into the water. “It’s like. . an itch.” He shook his head. “No, that’s stupid. Not like an itch. It’s like. .” He chuckled a little, incredulous of himself. “Not like anything, actually. It just. . is. You know?”

He looked to the elder Shen and nodded. The elder Shen did not nod back.

“And what it is, is constant. It’s. . always there. Always. Even when it’s silent, it’s there. It’s watching you. It’s listening to you. It’s tensing. It’s getting ready. When it first started happening, I guess I just felt it was. . stress, I don’t know. Whatever it is that goes on inside people that makes them hate themselves.”

“But?”

“But then it. . started saying things. It starts talking, even when it isn’t talking. It wants things, it needs things, and if you ignore it, it. .” He drew in a sharp breath, held it. “It doesn’t like that. And it keeps talking. And it keeps saying things. It wants you to do things and it wants you to kill things and it wants you to. . to hurt.

“So you start talking back, just so you think you aren’t insane for a few moments. And then it keeps insisting and you bargain with it and you beg it and you agree with it and it keeps talking until you just can’t. .” He bit his lower lip until it bled. “You need it to stop. You need it to be quiet. So you do what it wants.”

His entire body shook as he released his breath, as he sputtered a few droplets of blood onto his stomach. A tension he wasn’t sure was even there released itself. A cold hand took itself off his shoulder.

“You kill for it.”

He eased himself onto his elbows, onto his back and lay there, trying too hard to forget he could still remember what the voice still sounded like.

“And then?” Mahalar asked.

“And then what?”

“How does it feel?”

“For a moment, it feels right.”

“And then?”

“And then. . it starts talking again.”

Once the words had all been spoken and spent, Lenk was a little surprised at how easily they had come. He imagined it would all be more painful. He had always feared that, upon hearing him speak so candidly about murder and bloodshed and voices in his head, he would be met with horror.

Somehow, Mahalar’s stare, alight with eager curiosity, was worse.

“If you called to it-” the elder Shen began.

“You’re not listening,” Lenk interrupted.

“I am. I hear you now as I heard them then. I heard them weep and I heard them cry out. But they still killed the demons like nothing else could. Their suffering still prevented more from happening. The netherlings come to free Ulbecetonth and use her for their own purposes. They aren’t the first. They won’t be the last unless you call out to it and kill her.”

“So what? Why can’t we leave Ulbecetonth in wherever you left her?”

“Because then we still have to guard her. We still have to tell the stories. We have to hand our children hatchets as soon as they can walk and teach them how to kill before they can speak.”

“So it’s all for your people,” Lenk chuckled. “And here I thought you were some benevolent, wise old fart who just wanted to make the world a better place.”

“I don’t care about the world. I’ve been on it long enough to have grown bored with the novelty of it, human,” Mahalar growled, dust exuding from his mouth. “I care about my people. That’s why I want to save them.”

“If you wanted that, you wouldn’t be standing by and sending them to go die tomorrow.”

“Die? No, human. We are born dead. Every Shen child is raised to know that his life belongs to the oaths we swore. We escaped slavery under Ulbecetonth to be made slaves again through generations. The oaths became hymn. The Shen below have been waiting for tomorrow all their lives, the time they can kill and die and be free of this. . all of this.

“I would have them live. I would have them have an island that was a home and not a battleground waiting to happen. I would have them find uses for things other than weapons. And that cannot happen unless you-”

“I’m not going to,” Lenk said. “I can’t.”

He staggered to his feet, plucked up his shirt, and eased it back over his head. When his vision was cleared of the cloth, Mahalar stood at the edge of the stairs, staring over his shoulder at the young man.

“I am well aware of what you can’t do, human,” Mahalar said. “I know you can’t survive without it. That wound in your shoulder is not the only thing that pains you, is it? All the agony it has spared you from is coming back.”

“This isn’t doing a lot to convince me,” Lenk replied.

“I suspect it might not. If you can’t see that you will die without the voice, then you cannot be convinced. But I was in the chasm, too. I saw you. And you know that Ulbecetonth will break free one day. And you know she will come for you, the murderer of her children.”

The elder Shen turned and began to shamble down the stairs.

“But maybe you’ll get lucky and die tomorrow. That way, you won’t have to see what happens when she does break free.”

Lenk watched him go. He watched the fire pits go dark as the Shen extinguished them and hefted their weapons. He watched the fish flee from the sky as the first light of dawn began to creep over the horizon. He watched the forest and wondered where Kataria might be in that tangle of kelp and coral.

And he tried to ignore the pains creeping through his body.