The Skybound Sea
Page 1
ACT ONE
THE BEAST’S
MANY NAMES
PROLOGUE
The Aeons’ Gate
Island of Teji
The Beginning of Fall
No matter what god he believes in, a man is not entitled to much in life.
The Gods gave him breath. Then they gave him needs. Then they stopped giving. Society affords him only a few extra luxuries: the desire for gold and the demand to spend it.
And the choices he has for himself are even more limited. If he lives well, he gets to choose to die. If he doesn’t, he gets to choose to kill. And the men who kill are small men with small pleasures.
The Gods have no love for those who don’t kill in Their name. Society loathes a man who doesn’t fight under a banner. A small man doesn’t get to choose who or how or when or why he kills.
But sometimes he gets lucky.
And then he gets to sit behind Gevrauch’s desk and see what the Bookkeeper sees. He sees how they die.
I’ve never considered myself a lucky man until now.
I’ve made poor choices.
I chose to accept the job posed to me: to guard the priest that guarded the book that opens heaven and hell. I chose to follow the book when it was stolen by those who would use it to open the latter.
I chose to kill for this book.
I am an adventurer, after all. No god, no banner.
And for the Gods and for society, I killed to retrieve the book and keep the Undergates closed that the misbegotten servants of the Gods, the Aeons, might be kept shut tight in the bowels of the earth.
Most of what happened next was out of my hands.
We retrieved the tome from the demons from a floating tomb and set out to return to civilization and claim our reward. I suppose I could be blamed for thinking that things would be somehow simpler with a manuscript used to open up hell in my possession.
But that’s beside the point.
We were shipwrecked upon a graveyard masquerading as an island. Teji: the battlefield where Aeons rebelled against heaven, where the seas rose to swallow the world, and where mortals fought to preserve the dominion of the Gods. Teji was born in death, killed in battle, and we found more of both there.
The island became a new battlefront, one that raged among three armies. All of which had equally strong desires to kill us. Some men are just popular.
The Abysmyths, the aforementioned demons, came searching for the tome, hoping to use it to return their hell-bound mother to an earth she could drown alive.
They—and we—found the netherlings instead. No one knows where they came from or what they are beyond four major qualities they share: they are led by a sadist calling himself Sheraptus, they are mostly women, they are purple, and they want everyone, demon and mortal, dead.
It might seem a bit gratuitous to add a race of tattooed, bloodthirsty lizardmen to the mix, but like I said, out of my hands. And they added themselves to a growing list of people eager to kill over this book.
Anyone reading this might be sensing a pattern developing.
And still, we escaped them all. We found sanctuary with the natives of Teji: the Owauku and the Gonwa. More lizardmen, though these ones at least had a king. I suppose that made them more trustworthy than the ones that wanted to chop off our heads. We were welcomed with open arms. We were feasted, elebrated. I was offered an opportunity, a decision. I took it.
I gave up.
The tome had been lost in the shipwreck. I chose to let it stay lost. I chose to turn around, return empty-handed but for a sword I dearly wanted to put away. I wanted to be a man who didn’t have to kill. I wanted to be a man who had a life.
A life with my companions.
Former companions, excuse me.
I made my choice. I was denied. And we were betrayed.
Togu, their king, had his reasons for handing us over to the netherlings, bound and helpless. Those are irrelevant. His reasons for finding the tome and delivering it to them are likewise meaningless. What matters is that they came for us, led by Sheraptus, and took the tome. He took the women. He left the rest of us to die.
We didn’t.
He had taken Asper, though. He had taken Kataria. At the time, I couldn’t bear that thought. At the time, I couldn’t let that happen. I should have. I know that now.
But then, I made another choice.
We came to rescue them. Bralston, an agent of the Venarium that had been tracking Sheraptus, aided us with an impromptu arrival. And together, we fought.
When the netherlings came, I killed them. When the demons came after them, I killed them. I fought to save my companions. I fought to save Kataria. I fought to protect them, protect our new life together.
I chose again.
I was betrayed again.
They abandoned me. To the netherlings’ blades and the demons’ claws, they abandoned me. Gariath leapt overboard. Denaos took Asper away. Dreadaeleon fled with Bralston.
Kataria looked into my eyes as I was about to die.
Kataria turned away.
I survived. Because of something inside me, something I used to be afraid of, I survived. The Shen, the demons, the netherlings, my own companions . . . I survived them all. I will continue to do so.
And I will be the only one left.
On Teji, I found something. Ice that spoke. Ice that had a memory. It talked to me of betrayals and liars and killers. And I listened.
That thing inside me. I can hear it clearly now. It tells me the truth. Tells me how we will survive. I wonder why I never listened to it before. But now it makes so much sense. Now I know.
Everyone must die.
Starting with my betrayers.
Denaos and Asper are at odds with each other. That’s never been anything to note since they returned from Sheraptus’s ship and their obnoxious quarrels became silent ones. She does not pray. He does not stop drinking.
Dreadaeleon does, though. He looks to them with envy, as though he resents not being a part of that frigid silence. When he is not doing that, he wallows in self-pity. He keeps company with Bralston. I have heard him pleading with the agent, begging him for petty things that I don’t care about.
We thought Gariath lost to us in the shipwreck. He is the one that caused it, after all, the one who had always been eager to die. When we found him alive, I thought it a sign that we were meant to return to a normal life. But now he speaks of the Shen, our enemies, in almost reverent tones. Fitting. Obvious. Clear.
And Kataria . . .
Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I wanted too much. Maybe I wanted it badly enough to overlook the fact that she was a shict and I was a race she was sworn to slaughter. Maybe.
But she betrayed me. Like the others. She has to die. First. Slowly.
. . . or so I think.
It gets hard to think sometimes. It’s hard to remember what that night was like. I never asked her why she abandoned me. I never asked her why she was speaking with a greenshict, those killers of men.
She has her reasons . . . right?
But are they good? If I asked her, maybe she’d tell me. Maybe we could still do this.
Sometimes, I think about it.
Then the voice starts screaming.
The Shen took the tome and fled to their island home of Jaga. We follow them there. The demons will, too, and the netherlings. I’ll kill them all.
This is what we were meant to do.
This is why we live.
We kill.
They die.
Our choice.
Our plan is to go to Jaga. Our plan is to find the tome, to keep it out of the hands of the Shen and everyone else. The island is far away. The way is treacherous. That doesn’t matter.
The traitors are coming with me.
I’m going to bury them there.
ONE
MANKIND
He awoke from the nightmares and said it.
“Hanth.”
He rose, slipped a dirty and threadbare robe over his body and wore nothing else. He stared at his hands, mortal soft and human frail.
“Hanth.”
He left a small hovel, one of many. He walked with a person, one of many, down to the harbor. Carried over their heads, passed along by his hands, he watched a corpse slide from their grasp, into the bay, and disappear under the depths. A short prayer. A short funeral.
One of many.
“Hanth.”
His name was Hanth.
He knew this after only three repetitions.
Three days ago, it took twenty times for him to remember that he was Hanth. Two days ago, it took eleven times to remember that he was not the Mouth. And today, after three repetitions, he remembered everything.
He remembered his father now, sailor and drunk. He remembered his mother, gone when he learned to walk. He remembered the promise he made to the child and wife he didn’t know, that Hanth would be there.
He met his wife and child. He kept his promise. Those memories were the ones that hurt, filled him with pain exquisite, like needles driven into flesh thought numb. Exciting. Excruciating.
And they never ended there. The needle slid deeper. He remembered the days when he lost them both. He remembered the day he begged deaf gods and their greedy servants to save his child. He remembered cursing them, cursing the name that could do nothing for them.
He threw away that name.
He heard Ulbecetonth speak to him in the darkness.
He became the Mouth.
“Hanth.”
That was his name now. The memories would not go. He didn’t want them to go. Mother Deep meant nothing.
So, too, did her commands. So, too, did the fealty he once swore to her.
He remembered that, too. The sound of a beating heart would not let him forget.
In the distance, so far away as to have come from another life, he could hear it. Its beat was singular and steady; a foot tapping impatiently. He turned and looked to the lonely temple at the edge of Port Yonder, the decrepit church standing upon a sandy cliff. The people left it there for the goddess they honored.
The people knew nothing. They did not know what the wars had left imprisoned in that temple.
And as long as he lived, they never would.
He had once agreed to make them know. He had agreed to bring Daga-Mer back. The Mouth had agreed to that.
He was Hanth.
Daga-Mer would wait forever.
He turned his back on the Father now, as he had turned his back on his former life, and turned his attentions to the harbor.
Another body. Another splash.
One of many since the longfaces attacked.
What they had come for, no one knew. Even though the Mouth had once been their enemy, Hanth knew nothing of their motives, why they had come to Yonder, why they had slaughtered countless people, why they burned the city, why they had attacked the temple and done nothing more than shattered a statue and left.
He knew only that they had done these things. The bodies, indiscriminately butchered, lay as evidence amongst half the city that was now reduced to ashen skeletons.
His concerns were no longer for them, but for the dead and for the people who carried them, bodies in one hand and sacrifices in the other as they moved in slow lines to the harbor.
One procession bowed their heads for a moment, then turned away and left. Another came to take their place at the edge of the docks. Another would follow them. By nightfall, the first procession would be back.
“Not going to join in?”
He turned, saw the girl with the bushy black hair and the broad grin against her dusky skin that had not diminished in the slightest, even if her hands were darkened with dried blood and she reeked of death and ashes.
“Kasla.”
He never had to repeat her name.
She glanced past his shoulder to the funerary processions. “Is it that you’re choosing to stand away from them or did they choose for you?” Upon his perplexed look, she sighed. “They don’t speak well of you, Hanth. After all you’ve done for us, after you helped distribute food and organize the arrangements, they still don’t trust you.”
He said nothing. He didn’t blame them. He didn’t care.
“Might be because of your skin,” she said, holding her arm out and comparing it to his. “No one’s going to believe you once lived here when you look like a pimple on someone’s tanned ass.”
“It’s not that,” he replied.
She sighed. “No, it’s not. You don’t pray with them, Hanth. They want to appreciate you. They want to see you as someone sent from Zamanthras, to guide them.”
He stared at her, unmoved.
“And that’s kind of hard to do when you spit on Her name,” Kasla sighed. “Couldn’t you just humor them?”
“I could,” he said.
“Then why don’t you?”
He regarded her with more coldness than he intended and spoke.
“Because they would hold their child’s lifeless body in their hands and beg for Zamanthras to bring her back,” he said, “and when no one would deign to step from heaven to do anything, they would know me a liar. People can hate me if they want. I will do what the Gods can’t and help them anyway.”
It was harder to turn away from her than it was to turn away from anything, from everything else. It was harder to hear the pain in her voice than it was to hear the heartbeat of a demon.
“Then how,” she asked softly, “will you ever call this city home?”
He closed his eyes, sighed. She was angry. She was disappointed in him. He used to know how to handle this.
He looked, instead, to the distant warehouse, the largest building seated not far away from the temple. It, too, was a prison, though of a more common nature. It held a captive of flesh and blood behind a heavy door. Its prisoner’s heart beat with a sound that could not reach Hanth’s ears.
“Rashodd,” he said the name. “He did not try to escape?”
“He didn’t, no. Algi watches his cell now.” He could sense the question before she asked it. “How did you know his name?”
“He’s a Cragsman,” Hanth replied, evading it less than skillfully. “A shallow intellect and all the savagery and cunning of a bear. If we’ve two more men to spare, then put them both on watch with Algi.”
“That’s difficult,” she said. “Everyone not busy with the dead are busy with the dying. We’ve still got the sick to think about.”
Hanth had been avoiding the problem and the ill alike, never once coming close to the run-down building that had been used to house them. He could handle the dead. He could quell unrest. He could not handle illness.
Not without remembering his daughter.
And yet, it was a problem to handle, one whose origins were not even agreed upon. Plague and bad fish were blamed at first, but the disease lingered. More began to speak of poison, delivered from the hands of shicts ever dedicated to ending humanity. Whispers, rumors; both likely wrong, but requiring attention.
One more problem that he would have to face, along with the dead, along with dwindling resources, along with the prisoner Rashodd, along with Daga-Mer, along with the fact that he had once entered this city with the intent of ending it. He would tell them and they would hate him, someday.
Kasla . . .
He would never tell her.
She would never hate him.
He cast his gaze skyward. Clouds roiled, darkened. Thunder rumbled, echoed. A lone seagull circled overhead, soundless against the churning skies.
“Rain?” Kasla asked.
“Water,” he replied. One problem alleviated, at least.
Yet the promise of more water did not cause him the relief it should have, not so long as his eyes remained fixed upon the seagull.
“That’s odd,” she said, following his gaze. “It’s flying in such tight circles. I’ve never seen a gull move so . . .”
Unnaturally, he thought, dread rising in his craw. Gulls don’t.
His fears mounted with every moment, every silent flutter of feathers, even before he could behold the thing fully. He swallowed hard as it came down, flapping its wings as it plopped upon two yellow feet and ruffled its feathers, turning two vast eyes upon him.
He heard Kasla gasp as she stared into its face. He had no breath left for such a thing.
“What in the name of . . .” Words and Gods failed her. “What is it?”
He did not tell her. He had hoped to never tell her.
But the Omen stared back at him.
From feet to neck, it was a squat gull. Past that, it was a nightmare: a withered face, sagging flesh, and hooked nose disguising female features that barely qualified as such. Its teeth, little yellow needles, chattered as it stared at them both with tremendous white orbs, a gaze too vast to be capable of focusing on anything.
It was not the monstrosity’s gaze that caused his blood to freeze, not when it tilted its head back, opened its mouth, and spoke.
“He’s loose,” a man’s voice, barely a notch above a boy’s, and terrified, echoed in its jaws. “Sweet Mother, he’s loose! Get back! Get back in your cell! Someone! ANYONE! HELP!”
“That’s . . . that’s Algi’s voice,” Kasla gasped, eyes wide and trembling. “How is . . . what’s going—”
“Zamanthras help me, Zamanthras help me,” Algi’s voice echoed through the Omen’s mouth. “Please don’t . . . no, you don’t have to do this. Please! Don’t! PLEASE!”
“Hanth . . . what . . .” Kasla’s voice brimmed with confusion and sorrow as her eyes brimmed with tears.
“In oblivion, salvation,” a dozen voices answered her. “In obedience, salvation. In acceptance, salvation. In defiance . . .”
He looked up. Seated across the roof of a building like a choir, a dozen sets of vast eyes stared back, a dozen jaws of yellow needles chattered in unison and, as one dreadful voice, spoke.
“Damnation.”
“What are they, Hanth?” Kasla was crying. “What are they?”
“Hide,” he told her, taking steps backward. “Run. Get everyone as far away from here as you can.”
“There are boats, we could—”
“Stay on dry land! Stay out of the water! Tell them to leave the dead and the sick.”
“What? We can’t just leave them here to—”
No finish to the plea. No beginning to an answer. He was running.
People cast scowls at his back, shouted at him as he rudely shoved through their processions, cursed his blasphemies. That was easy to ignore. Kasla called after him, begged him to come back. That was not.
They could despise him. He would still save them. He would try.
Thunder clashed overhead, an echoing boom that shook his bones. He glanced up. The clouds swirled swiftly as if stirred in a cauldron. At their center, a dark eye of darker calm formed.
Directly over the temple. It followed the heartbeat.
“He wears the storm as a crown.”
He charged through the city streets, toward the warehouse turned into a prison. He would have prayed that its charge was still there. He would have prayed that the Omen was nothing more than a sick joke from a spiteful beast. He would have, if he thought any god still had ears for him.
THE BEAST’S
MANY NAMES
PROLOGUE
The Aeons’ Gate
Island of Teji
The Beginning of Fall
No matter what god he believes in, a man is not entitled to much in life.
The Gods gave him breath. Then they gave him needs. Then they stopped giving. Society affords him only a few extra luxuries: the desire for gold and the demand to spend it.
And the choices he has for himself are even more limited. If he lives well, he gets to choose to die. If he doesn’t, he gets to choose to kill. And the men who kill are small men with small pleasures.
The Gods have no love for those who don’t kill in Their name. Society loathes a man who doesn’t fight under a banner. A small man doesn’t get to choose who or how or when or why he kills.
But sometimes he gets lucky.
And then he gets to sit behind Gevrauch’s desk and see what the Bookkeeper sees. He sees how they die.
I’ve never considered myself a lucky man until now.
I’ve made poor choices.
I chose to accept the job posed to me: to guard the priest that guarded the book that opens heaven and hell. I chose to follow the book when it was stolen by those who would use it to open the latter.
I chose to kill for this book.
I am an adventurer, after all. No god, no banner.
And for the Gods and for society, I killed to retrieve the book and keep the Undergates closed that the misbegotten servants of the Gods, the Aeons, might be kept shut tight in the bowels of the earth.
Most of what happened next was out of my hands.
We retrieved the tome from the demons from a floating tomb and set out to return to civilization and claim our reward. I suppose I could be blamed for thinking that things would be somehow simpler with a manuscript used to open up hell in my possession.
But that’s beside the point.
We were shipwrecked upon a graveyard masquerading as an island. Teji: the battlefield where Aeons rebelled against heaven, where the seas rose to swallow the world, and where mortals fought to preserve the dominion of the Gods. Teji was born in death, killed in battle, and we found more of both there.
The island became a new battlefront, one that raged among three armies. All of which had equally strong desires to kill us. Some men are just popular.
The Abysmyths, the aforementioned demons, came searching for the tome, hoping to use it to return their hell-bound mother to an earth she could drown alive.
They—and we—found the netherlings instead. No one knows where they came from or what they are beyond four major qualities they share: they are led by a sadist calling himself Sheraptus, they are mostly women, they are purple, and they want everyone, demon and mortal, dead.
It might seem a bit gratuitous to add a race of tattooed, bloodthirsty lizardmen to the mix, but like I said, out of my hands. And they added themselves to a growing list of people eager to kill over this book.
Anyone reading this might be sensing a pattern developing.
And still, we escaped them all. We found sanctuary with the natives of Teji: the Owauku and the Gonwa. More lizardmen, though these ones at least had a king. I suppose that made them more trustworthy than the ones that wanted to chop off our heads. We were welcomed with open arms. We were feasted, elebrated. I was offered an opportunity, a decision. I took it.
I gave up.
The tome had been lost in the shipwreck. I chose to let it stay lost. I chose to turn around, return empty-handed but for a sword I dearly wanted to put away. I wanted to be a man who didn’t have to kill. I wanted to be a man who had a life.
A life with my companions.
Former companions, excuse me.
I made my choice. I was denied. And we were betrayed.
Togu, their king, had his reasons for handing us over to the netherlings, bound and helpless. Those are irrelevant. His reasons for finding the tome and delivering it to them are likewise meaningless. What matters is that they came for us, led by Sheraptus, and took the tome. He took the women. He left the rest of us to die.
We didn’t.
He had taken Asper, though. He had taken Kataria. At the time, I couldn’t bear that thought. At the time, I couldn’t let that happen. I should have. I know that now.
But then, I made another choice.
We came to rescue them. Bralston, an agent of the Venarium that had been tracking Sheraptus, aided us with an impromptu arrival. And together, we fought.
When the netherlings came, I killed them. When the demons came after them, I killed them. I fought to save my companions. I fought to save Kataria. I fought to protect them, protect our new life together.
I chose again.
I was betrayed again.
They abandoned me. To the netherlings’ blades and the demons’ claws, they abandoned me. Gariath leapt overboard. Denaos took Asper away. Dreadaeleon fled with Bralston.
Kataria looked into my eyes as I was about to die.
Kataria turned away.
I survived. Because of something inside me, something I used to be afraid of, I survived. The Shen, the demons, the netherlings, my own companions . . . I survived them all. I will continue to do so.
And I will be the only one left.
On Teji, I found something. Ice that spoke. Ice that had a memory. It talked to me of betrayals and liars and killers. And I listened.
That thing inside me. I can hear it clearly now. It tells me the truth. Tells me how we will survive. I wonder why I never listened to it before. But now it makes so much sense. Now I know.
Everyone must die.
Starting with my betrayers.
Denaos and Asper are at odds with each other. That’s never been anything to note since they returned from Sheraptus’s ship and their obnoxious quarrels became silent ones. She does not pray. He does not stop drinking.
Dreadaeleon does, though. He looks to them with envy, as though he resents not being a part of that frigid silence. When he is not doing that, he wallows in self-pity. He keeps company with Bralston. I have heard him pleading with the agent, begging him for petty things that I don’t care about.
We thought Gariath lost to us in the shipwreck. He is the one that caused it, after all, the one who had always been eager to die. When we found him alive, I thought it a sign that we were meant to return to a normal life. But now he speaks of the Shen, our enemies, in almost reverent tones. Fitting. Obvious. Clear.
And Kataria . . .
Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I wanted too much. Maybe I wanted it badly enough to overlook the fact that she was a shict and I was a race she was sworn to slaughter. Maybe.
But she betrayed me. Like the others. She has to die. First. Slowly.
. . . or so I think.
It gets hard to think sometimes. It’s hard to remember what that night was like. I never asked her why she abandoned me. I never asked her why she was speaking with a greenshict, those killers of men.
She has her reasons . . . right?
But are they good? If I asked her, maybe she’d tell me. Maybe we could still do this.
Sometimes, I think about it.
Then the voice starts screaming.
The Shen took the tome and fled to their island home of Jaga. We follow them there. The demons will, too, and the netherlings. I’ll kill them all.
This is what we were meant to do.
This is why we live.
We kill.
They die.
Our choice.
Our plan is to go to Jaga. Our plan is to find the tome, to keep it out of the hands of the Shen and everyone else. The island is far away. The way is treacherous. That doesn’t matter.
The traitors are coming with me.
I’m going to bury them there.
ONE
MANKIND
He awoke from the nightmares and said it.
“Hanth.”
He rose, slipped a dirty and threadbare robe over his body and wore nothing else. He stared at his hands, mortal soft and human frail.
“Hanth.”
He left a small hovel, one of many. He walked with a person, one of many, down to the harbor. Carried over their heads, passed along by his hands, he watched a corpse slide from their grasp, into the bay, and disappear under the depths. A short prayer. A short funeral.
One of many.
“Hanth.”
His name was Hanth.
He knew this after only three repetitions.
Three days ago, it took twenty times for him to remember that he was Hanth. Two days ago, it took eleven times to remember that he was not the Mouth. And today, after three repetitions, he remembered everything.
He remembered his father now, sailor and drunk. He remembered his mother, gone when he learned to walk. He remembered the promise he made to the child and wife he didn’t know, that Hanth would be there.
He met his wife and child. He kept his promise. Those memories were the ones that hurt, filled him with pain exquisite, like needles driven into flesh thought numb. Exciting. Excruciating.
And they never ended there. The needle slid deeper. He remembered the days when he lost them both. He remembered the day he begged deaf gods and their greedy servants to save his child. He remembered cursing them, cursing the name that could do nothing for them.
He threw away that name.
He heard Ulbecetonth speak to him in the darkness.
He became the Mouth.
“Hanth.”
That was his name now. The memories would not go. He didn’t want them to go. Mother Deep meant nothing.
So, too, did her commands. So, too, did the fealty he once swore to her.
He remembered that, too. The sound of a beating heart would not let him forget.
In the distance, so far away as to have come from another life, he could hear it. Its beat was singular and steady; a foot tapping impatiently. He turned and looked to the lonely temple at the edge of Port Yonder, the decrepit church standing upon a sandy cliff. The people left it there for the goddess they honored.
The people knew nothing. They did not know what the wars had left imprisoned in that temple.
And as long as he lived, they never would.
He had once agreed to make them know. He had agreed to bring Daga-Mer back. The Mouth had agreed to that.
He was Hanth.
Daga-Mer would wait forever.
He turned his back on the Father now, as he had turned his back on his former life, and turned his attentions to the harbor.
Another body. Another splash.
One of many since the longfaces attacked.
What they had come for, no one knew. Even though the Mouth had once been their enemy, Hanth knew nothing of their motives, why they had come to Yonder, why they had slaughtered countless people, why they burned the city, why they had attacked the temple and done nothing more than shattered a statue and left.
He knew only that they had done these things. The bodies, indiscriminately butchered, lay as evidence amongst half the city that was now reduced to ashen skeletons.
His concerns were no longer for them, but for the dead and for the people who carried them, bodies in one hand and sacrifices in the other as they moved in slow lines to the harbor.
One procession bowed their heads for a moment, then turned away and left. Another came to take their place at the edge of the docks. Another would follow them. By nightfall, the first procession would be back.
“Not going to join in?”
He turned, saw the girl with the bushy black hair and the broad grin against her dusky skin that had not diminished in the slightest, even if her hands were darkened with dried blood and she reeked of death and ashes.
“Kasla.”
He never had to repeat her name.
She glanced past his shoulder to the funerary processions. “Is it that you’re choosing to stand away from them or did they choose for you?” Upon his perplexed look, she sighed. “They don’t speak well of you, Hanth. After all you’ve done for us, after you helped distribute food and organize the arrangements, they still don’t trust you.”
He said nothing. He didn’t blame them. He didn’t care.
“Might be because of your skin,” she said, holding her arm out and comparing it to his. “No one’s going to believe you once lived here when you look like a pimple on someone’s tanned ass.”
“It’s not that,” he replied.
She sighed. “No, it’s not. You don’t pray with them, Hanth. They want to appreciate you. They want to see you as someone sent from Zamanthras, to guide them.”
He stared at her, unmoved.
“And that’s kind of hard to do when you spit on Her name,” Kasla sighed. “Couldn’t you just humor them?”
“I could,” he said.
“Then why don’t you?”
He regarded her with more coldness than he intended and spoke.
“Because they would hold their child’s lifeless body in their hands and beg for Zamanthras to bring her back,” he said, “and when no one would deign to step from heaven to do anything, they would know me a liar. People can hate me if they want. I will do what the Gods can’t and help them anyway.”
It was harder to turn away from her than it was to turn away from anything, from everything else. It was harder to hear the pain in her voice than it was to hear the heartbeat of a demon.
“Then how,” she asked softly, “will you ever call this city home?”
He closed his eyes, sighed. She was angry. She was disappointed in him. He used to know how to handle this.
He looked, instead, to the distant warehouse, the largest building seated not far away from the temple. It, too, was a prison, though of a more common nature. It held a captive of flesh and blood behind a heavy door. Its prisoner’s heart beat with a sound that could not reach Hanth’s ears.
“Rashodd,” he said the name. “He did not try to escape?”
“He didn’t, no. Algi watches his cell now.” He could sense the question before she asked it. “How did you know his name?”
“He’s a Cragsman,” Hanth replied, evading it less than skillfully. “A shallow intellect and all the savagery and cunning of a bear. If we’ve two more men to spare, then put them both on watch with Algi.”
“That’s difficult,” she said. “Everyone not busy with the dead are busy with the dying. We’ve still got the sick to think about.”
Hanth had been avoiding the problem and the ill alike, never once coming close to the run-down building that had been used to house them. He could handle the dead. He could quell unrest. He could not handle illness.
Not without remembering his daughter.
And yet, it was a problem to handle, one whose origins were not even agreed upon. Plague and bad fish were blamed at first, but the disease lingered. More began to speak of poison, delivered from the hands of shicts ever dedicated to ending humanity. Whispers, rumors; both likely wrong, but requiring attention.
One more problem that he would have to face, along with the dead, along with dwindling resources, along with the prisoner Rashodd, along with Daga-Mer, along with the fact that he had once entered this city with the intent of ending it. He would tell them and they would hate him, someday.
Kasla . . .
He would never tell her.
She would never hate him.
He cast his gaze skyward. Clouds roiled, darkened. Thunder rumbled, echoed. A lone seagull circled overhead, soundless against the churning skies.
“Rain?” Kasla asked.
“Water,” he replied. One problem alleviated, at least.
Yet the promise of more water did not cause him the relief it should have, not so long as his eyes remained fixed upon the seagull.
“That’s odd,” she said, following his gaze. “It’s flying in such tight circles. I’ve never seen a gull move so . . .”
Unnaturally, he thought, dread rising in his craw. Gulls don’t.
His fears mounted with every moment, every silent flutter of feathers, even before he could behold the thing fully. He swallowed hard as it came down, flapping its wings as it plopped upon two yellow feet and ruffled its feathers, turning two vast eyes upon him.
He heard Kasla gasp as she stared into its face. He had no breath left for such a thing.
“What in the name of . . .” Words and Gods failed her. “What is it?”
He did not tell her. He had hoped to never tell her.
But the Omen stared back at him.
From feet to neck, it was a squat gull. Past that, it was a nightmare: a withered face, sagging flesh, and hooked nose disguising female features that barely qualified as such. Its teeth, little yellow needles, chattered as it stared at them both with tremendous white orbs, a gaze too vast to be capable of focusing on anything.
It was not the monstrosity’s gaze that caused his blood to freeze, not when it tilted its head back, opened its mouth, and spoke.
“He’s loose,” a man’s voice, barely a notch above a boy’s, and terrified, echoed in its jaws. “Sweet Mother, he’s loose! Get back! Get back in your cell! Someone! ANYONE! HELP!”
“That’s . . . that’s Algi’s voice,” Kasla gasped, eyes wide and trembling. “How is . . . what’s going—”
“Zamanthras help me, Zamanthras help me,” Algi’s voice echoed through the Omen’s mouth. “Please don’t . . . no, you don’t have to do this. Please! Don’t! PLEASE!”
“Hanth . . . what . . .” Kasla’s voice brimmed with confusion and sorrow as her eyes brimmed with tears.
“In oblivion, salvation,” a dozen voices answered her. “In obedience, salvation. In acceptance, salvation. In defiance . . .”
He looked up. Seated across the roof of a building like a choir, a dozen sets of vast eyes stared back, a dozen jaws of yellow needles chattered in unison and, as one dreadful voice, spoke.
“Damnation.”
“What are they, Hanth?” Kasla was crying. “What are they?”
“Hide,” he told her, taking steps backward. “Run. Get everyone as far away from here as you can.”
“There are boats, we could—”
“Stay on dry land! Stay out of the water! Tell them to leave the dead and the sick.”
“What? We can’t just leave them here to—”
No finish to the plea. No beginning to an answer. He was running.
People cast scowls at his back, shouted at him as he rudely shoved through their processions, cursed his blasphemies. That was easy to ignore. Kasla called after him, begged him to come back. That was not.
They could despise him. He would still save them. He would try.
Thunder clashed overhead, an echoing boom that shook his bones. He glanced up. The clouds swirled swiftly as if stirred in a cauldron. At their center, a dark eye of darker calm formed.
Directly over the temple. It followed the heartbeat.
“He wears the storm as a crown.”
He charged through the city streets, toward the warehouse turned into a prison. He would have prayed that its charge was still there. He would have prayed that the Omen was nothing more than a sick joke from a spiteful beast. He would have, if he thought any god still had ears for him.
