The Skybound Sea (64 page)

No matter, he could find the crown now. He could finish this. This dark-skinned overscum had killed an impressive number. Only Daga-Mer and the most resilient of demons remained. Of course, only a few of his own warriors remained. That didn’t matter, either, once he had—

“The crown.”

He saw it there, lying like some forgotten thing. He scrambled toward it on his hands and knees in the gore-soaked dirt, careful not to be seen by anyone. He grew quicker as he approached, limbs flailing in desperation to reach it. He lunged for it.

It was in the air.

In pale, pink hands.

On a dirty, sweaty brow.

Dreadaeleon closed his eyes. He drew in a long, strong breath. When he opened them again, he was ablaze.

H
is shoulder hurt. He was bleeding. Darkness pressed in all around him. Bloodthirsty women were somewhere behind him.

“Two more we left behind.”

Kataria wasn’t helping.

“We had no choice,” he said.

“I know,” she said, sighing. “I know. But we left them behind with her. With Xhai.”

“And that means we’re not here with Xhai,” Lenk said. “That’s something.”

“Is it? I can’t even see my hand in front of my face. Can you?”

He collided with the heel of her palm and recoiled with a snarl.

“You’re hilarious.”

“I’m angry. I also have no idea where we’re going and I have no idea why it is you think we shouldn’t stop and try to figure it out. And of course, you’re not going to tell me. Because that would just be
too
sane, wouldn’t it?”

He was pleased she couldn’t see him wince at that. After all that had happened, he had thought sanity and accusations surrounding it wouldn’t be such a touchy subject. That had been before they had fled into the tunnels, though, before they had run through the winding darkness to escape the netherlings.

Before someone, somewhere, down there in the dark wet stone, started muttering his name.

“We lost the netherlings, didn’t we?” he said. “We’re still alive. The tome is still in the least dangerous hands possible. We … we did good.”

“We left them behind.”

“What the hell did you
think
was going to happen?” His voice did not echo in the darkness. “Why the hell did you think I
wanted
to run? I had everything I wanted back there. You, no voices in my head … but you said we shouldn’t run and I thought you were right.”

“I was right then and I’m right now,” she snarled back. “I’m right
all the Gods damned time
and we should go back.”

“Through a bunch of netherlings to dig ourselves out of a heap of rocks?
We might emerge in time to see Xhai strangling Asper with Denaos’s intestines. We go forward.”

“At the very least, we should stop and check your shoulder.”

“We go forward.”

“Lenk.”

He said nothing.

“Never should have come here.”

She hadn’t said that.

The wall became cold beneath his hand, a kind of urgent cold that reached out with stony fingers to intertwine with his. He felt a pulse through his palm, an airless breath drawn in. And when it released, the light came.

“But you did
,” the man in the ice said. The light in his eyes filtered through the tomb of frost, staring past Lenk and into nothing.
“And you brought it back here.”

He was strong. And he was dead. His beard was white and his lips moved mechanically. Cords of flesh pulled him against a pillar of rock and crushed his body into macabre angles beneath the tomb of glassy frost, blackened and frozen in ancient rigor. His eyes beamed with blue light. His voice was hollow.

“You should not have returned, brother.”

Kataria was shivering, hovering around Lenk, uncertain whether to hide behind him or stand before him. She tried to make her chattering teeth seem a bare-toothed snarl. Lenk stared into the man’s eyes. He felt cold. It didn’t bother him.

“What the hell are you supposed to be?” she demanded of the man in the ice.

“I am the one who stayed behind, to watch my brothers, to see the end of this war. I am the one betrayed, the slayer who waited for the world to betray us as he said it would.”

“So … is that
whole
thing your name or do you have a regular one?”

“I once did.”

“And … what are you?”

The answer came, no matter how badly he wished it hadn’t.

“He’s me,” Lenk said. “They all are.”

“Who?”

In answer, the glow from the ice grew brighter, enough to illuminate the tunnel into a cavern. They stood upon a high ledge above a chasm yawning into nothingness. And below, a dozen other blue lights bloomed like dead flowers, reflecting off a dozen other tombs of frost.

They marched into the darkness, with their swords high and their black cloaks flying and their eyes alight with a cold fury that death could not diminish. In scenes of battle and of death, with arrows and blades and wounds
decorating their flesh, they were frozen. They endured, constant as the death in the air and the dead beneath their feet. Demons, humans, wearing the images of Ulbecetonth and of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity, skeletons all, long gone from the battle the people in the ice still fought.

“Riffid,” Kataria gasped breathlessly, staring out over the pit.

“That name is memory
,”
the man in the ice said
.
“They cried out to many gods in that war. For nothing. We are too far gone from the sun. No god can hear us down here.”

“What happened?” Lenk asked.

“This is where we ended it. All of it,”
the man said
.
“The mortal armies were failing. The demons were endless, the Aeons were all-powerful, the Gods were deaf. All was lost for the mortals and their House. Until he decided to intervene.”

“Who?” Kataria asked. Neither man answered. She looked to Lenk. “
Who?
”

A desperate incredulity was lit upon her face. A demand, a plea, something that pained him to see. He didn’t want to admit it any more than she wanted to know.

“Him,” Lenk repeated. “Mahalar spoke of you, the ones who killed the demons. But you only carried the swords, didn’t you? It was him who gave you the power, him who speaks through you. It was him who killed the demons and drove back Ulbecetonth.”

“What?” Kataria asked.

“God of Gods
,”
the man in the ice answered
.
“He had no name. Like us. He had no need for them. He decided there would be no demons, no gods, no rulers of mortality. The terrible burden of their existence was theirs to bear. Ours to deliver.”

“You talk like you aren’t one of them, aren’t mortal.”

“I am no god. My flesh rots beneath this ice. My bones snap under her grasp. But I am not like them. They hated him for his declaration. They hated us for delivering it. Men and the gods they served. They turned on us here, in this cavern, in this battle as we fought to make it to the drowned throne of the Kraken Queen. A pitiful jest. Without us, they could not kill her. They could only lock her behind doors of meaning.”

He sighed centuries out into the darkness.

“And you returned her key, brother.”

Lenk looked to his satchel. Even in the darkness, even obscured by the pouch, the barest glimpse of the tome’s cover revealed a blackness that refused to be obscured. If anything, it grew darker, heavier, more significant. An eager child perking up when it knew someone was talking about it.

“The tome … you wrote it?”

“Long ago. He knew that the gods would need to be challenged one day, as the demons were, that tyrants could never be traded for tyrants. And he told us to write the book, with all the knowledge of the demons and mortalkind and all that it meant to fear and hope. It was intended to stay in our hands.”

He laughed the sounds of ice breaking.

“And he was right. Yours are the only hands left, brother.”

“What is it you think I’m going to do with it?”

“There is no thinking, brother, for there is no question. There is only certainty and his will. You will use the tome as you are meant to, as he wills you to.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Reiteration is a poor defense against inevitability, brother. All that he speaks shall pass. He, the God of Gods, told us our duty, so we carried it out. He told us to kill, and we did. He said we would be betrayed, we were, as you knew you would be.”

He did not look behind him. It did not help. He could feel the hurt in Kataria’s stare as keenly as any metal.

“That was a fear. The same as any man of flesh and bone would have.”

“It was a certainty.”

“If it was certain, then I would have accepted it.”

“Denial is a poor shield, brother.”

“And a great weapon. You swing it hard enough, it breaks just about anything. Especially certainty.”

“We heard you when you came to this land. We heard your fears through him and they spoke loudly.”

“And what do you hear now?”

The man was silent.

“I sent him away,” Lenk said. “I rejected him. I rejected everything he offered me, every price he asked. I’m free of him.” He felt the pain in his shoulder. He did not reach for it. “I’m free of that ruler.”

“He does not rule. He speaks. He blesses us, tells us what must be done and gives us the strength to do it.”

“Sounds like any other tyrant masquerading as benevolent.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps he knew that it was the price we had to pay for the rest of mankind. It’s a great power, brother. It came at a price we paid willingly.”

“Not me.”

“Then you will die.”

“I haven’t yet.”

“You haven’t accepted it yet.”

“You talk about leaving gods and rulers behind and in the same breath tell me about inevitability and fate.”

“They are not the same thing. He does not come to us and tell us this is how it must be. We felt the same that you did, the same fears, the same urges, the same knowledge that those around us loathed us and hated us and feared us. He does not come to us, brother. We call out to him, whether we know it or not.”

Lenk looked to Kataria. Instinctively. Shamefully. He looked to her and
tried to convince himself that it was the voice inside his head that had said all those things about her and told him she would kill him. He looked to her and mouthed, noiselessly, “it was not me.”

She looked back. He could not bear her stare.

“I came here to get the book away,” Lenk said, turning back to the man in the ice. “Is there a way out of here or not?”

“Walk amongst your brothers. Down there in the darkness and the cold. Water carved these tunnels. It will lead you.”

“Where?”

“There is only one way.”

In the distance, he could hear something. Echoes of war cries carried on the gloom. The rattle of armor. Growing louder.

Whether the corpse was being intentionally cryptic or not, he was right. There was only one way.

They made their way down into the pit, amongst the many frozen bodies and the dead. And still the man in the ice spoke, his voice as clear and close as it had been a moment ago.

“He still calls to you, brother. He scratches at the back of your head. He tells me this. He can heal you. He can make you strong. If only you let him back in.”

He almost turned to look back at them and answer. He would have, if Kataria were not right there, seizing his neck, forcing his eyes down and his feet forward.

“You’re not them,” she snarled.

“Down there, brother, you will find him
,”
the voice called after him
.
“Or you will find her.”

And his voice echoed in the darkness. And his lights lingered in the darkness. As they walked farther, following the sound of rushing water.

I’m doing it
.

The hope came, despite the blood trickling into her eye.

I’m stronger than her
.

Despite the muscles in her arm breaking beneath her skin.

I can do this
.

All ten of her fingers wrapped around Xhai’s fist, keeping it and the massive blade it clenched trembling over their heads. Xhai’s boots scraped against the rock. Her cursing stained the chamber’s still air. She pushed against the priestess and found the woman unyielding.

I can do it. I am doing it. I’m going to beat her and I’m going to survive and I’m going to save Denaos
.

The thought came with a sudden waver.

Denaos
.

She tossed the scantest glance over her shoulder, trying to catch the barest glimpse of the rogue.

It wasn’t clear how much of a mistake that was until she felt the netherling’s boot. It slammed into her belly, shattering her grasp and hurling her away. Somehow, though, she summoned just enough to curse him.

“Even—” she paused to gasp, collapsing to a knee, “—when I think about the bastard …”

“I don’t appreciate that kind of negativity.”

His hands were on her arms, hoisting her roughly to her feet, heedless of her glower. “Doesn’t make it less true.” She tried to find her breath. “She’s strong.”

“I really hadn’t figured that out when she beat me hard enough to make piss come out my nose.”

“But she’s not invincible,” Asper said. “If one of us can occupy her while the other one …” Asper paused, watching him run past her. “Where the hell are you going?”

He didn’t have to answer. The loud cackle that came from behind her did that well enough.

Scantest glance, barest glimpse. Sharp teeth in a wide, black-lipped smile. And she was running, too.

Breathless, staggering, struggling to stay on her feet. The sikkhun trotted after her, clacking claws and giggling wildly. It could have taken her in one pounce, but chased her with all the urgency of a child skipping through a field of dandelions.

There was, apparently, no aspect of netherling society that wasn’t, in some way, completely messed up.