Tome of the Undergates (81 page)

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Authors: Sam Sykes

BOOK: Tome of the Undergates
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‘I’ve been married.’
‘Same thing.’
‘Oh, Gods no.’ The rogue shook his head vigorously. ‘Marriage, you see, is an invention of man. It’s a trick in which you deceive someone into cleaning up after you when you’re too old to care whether you’re wearing pants when you piss. If it’s love . . . true love, one of you dies before the other realises they hate you.’
‘
And she will die long before us
,’ the voice whispered threateningly, ‘
they all will die, you know. They’re obstacles. They’re hindrances.
’
‘Stop,’ Lenk muttered.
‘Yes, I suppose it’s a little late for such quandaries, isn’t it?’ The rogue clapped the young man on the back as he clambered to his feet. ‘But I’m glad we had this talk. If nothing else, you can always buy your answers with your reward when we hand over the book.’
Denaos’s feet crunched upon the sand, leaving Lenk staring at his hands, straining not to blink, not to breathe. When the taller man’s footsteps were barely audible, the young man looked up and spoke to no one.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘What do you want?’
‘
It is not a matter of want. It is a matter of what must be done.
’
‘I’m not the man to do it. Not if it means that she—’
‘
We are the one to do it. All obstacles fade or are torn down, even her.
’
‘How do I get rid of you? How?’
‘
There is no such thing.
’
‘What do you do,’ he muttered, ‘when you want to be with someone . . . but you want to kill yourself?’
‘Ah,’ the rogue called, distantly, ‘that’s most definitely love.’
 
There was nothing left.
The stench of blood and cowardice, the reek of smoke and salt, the foul aromas of humanity and weakness were all vanished. Even the air hung still, carrying no scent of moisture rising from the earth or breath hissing from the trees. The world was as it was intended to be, free from all imperfect stenches.
All that remained was Gariath and the scent of rivers and rocks.
His legs felt weak underneath him as he pushed his way delicately through the jungle, following the memory’s trail. His wounds had since begun to heal, the burned flesh peeling off and the cuts scabbing over. It was something else that made him hesitant, made him wary of continuing, a sensation he hadn’t been able to smell through the stench of his own anger and the sheets of blood that he covered himself with.
His knees were soft as they had been when he first learned to hunt alongside his father. His bowels quivered with excitement as they had when he tasted the meat of his first prey. His chest trembled and felt as shallow as it had when he first mated. His arms felt weighted and weak as they had when he first held two wailing pups in his grasp, when he first learned he was a father.
That, all of it, was gone now. Only Gariath was left, of his family, of the
Rhega
. When he realised that, when he realised why he had followed a weak, scrawny human away from what had once been his home, where his family had once lived, where his children had cried and his father had bled, he realised what the sensation was.
Fear.
It was a foul emotion, Gariath thought, anger was much better. Within anger there was certainty, there was predictability, and he always knew how everything would end. Within fear, there was nothing. There was nothing to expect and nothing to keep hope from spawning inside him.
Hope died. Anger lived.
But it was with hope that he walked, following the scent as it wound its way through the jungle paths and into the heart of the forest where no one but he was meant to go. The spirits let him pass, drawing back their fronds and branches, leaving their rocks and roots out of his path, chasing the noisy beasts and birds from their crowns that he might hear.
Hear and smell.
The scent became overwhelming as he placed a claw upon the thick, leafy branch. The last branch, he realised, before he faced what lay upon the other side. It would be better to go back now, he knew, to go back to the certainty of anger and the predictability of bloodshed. It would be better to go back, safe in the knowledge that there were no more
Rhega
, that his father and his mate and his children were all gone.
It would be better to forget that he might have ever hoped.
But, still, he pushed past the branch.
The glade greeted him with the murmur of a stream and the gentle hum of sunlight peering through the branches. The earth was moist, but hard and green under his feet. It pressed against his soles affectionately, as if it were welcoming him back after a journey so long only the earth could remember him.
It knew his feet.
The water greeted him eagerly, lapping up to his waist as he waded through the shallow stream towards the verdant chunk of earth in the centre of it. It giggled, laughed and jumped up to grab at him, trying to invite him to swim as he had once before, before he had known what anger was.
The water knew him.
He reached down, leaving a hand in the stream as if to assure it that he would be back before too long. He ignored the splashing moans of disappointment as he climbed onto the chunk of green. The great stone loomed over it, tall, grey and jagged. An elder, he realised as he brushed a hand over it, who had seen the stream born, the forest born, and so much more.
He knew the stone.
He breathed deeply, inhaling the memories. The elder was free with his tales, let the scents escape his soil and fill Gariath’s nostrils. They came quickly, almost overwhelmingly.
Taoharga was born here
, he knew,
and she was the swiftest runner in the land. The earth scorned her feet and the beasts feared her approach.
He inhaled again.
Gathar stood here and sheltered his children beneath his wings when the storms came and did not relent for three days.
The sound of breath.
Argha and Hartaga were born here. They stood, they fought, they hunted and they bled together.
They came one after the other, his breaths short and ragged.
Gratha laughed while she mated here. Harathag roared to the sky here as his children died before he did. Iagrah watched her son catch a fish and wrestle with it here.
‘There . . .’ Gariath whispered, his voice afraid to confirm what he knew, ‘there were
Rhega
here.’ His eyelids twitched. His hand pressed hard against the stone. ‘They were . . .
we
were here.’
Were.
It was not the name of his people or his family that echoed in his mind. It was that ugly, muttering qualifier that caused his brain to ache and his lips to quiver.
Rhega
were
here. They are not any more.
That should have been the end of it, he knew, one more reason why hope was stupid, one more reason to go running back in tears to the comfort of hatred and the warmth of anger. He should have gone back, back to fighting, back to bloodshed. But he could not bring himself to walk away, not yet, not before he looked to the elder and asked.
‘Where did they all go?’
Gariath’s ear-frills twitched as he heard the sound of leaves rustling. He cast a glower out over the surrounding underbrush. Had one of the weakling humans followed him to this place where they weren’t meant to go?
Just as well
, he thought as he flexed his claws. There was no more reason to continue this imaginary game of pretending they didn’t deserve to die. There was no more reason to keep them alive. They were the answer to his question,
they
were where the
Rhega
went.
No more questions. No more excuses. This time they all died.
‘Come out and die with a bit of dignity,’ he growled, ‘or start running so I can chase you.’
His unseen spy answered, bursting from the foliage in a flash of red. It moved quickly, tearing so swiftly across the green and through the stream that he did not even lay eyes upon it until it was upon him.
There was a sudden pressure upon his ankle, warm and almost affectionate. Slowly, he glanced down, his claws untensing, wings furling themselves as he stared at the tiny red muzzle trying to wrap itself around his foot.
The pup, apparently, did not sense his smile and the young creature renewed his vigour, clawing at Gariath’s leg with short limbs, trying to coil a stubby tail about the taller
Rhega
’s leg to bring him to the ground.
Gariath reached down and tried to dislodge the pup with a gentle tug. The young
Rhega
only held on faster, emitting what was undoubtedly intended to be a warning growl. His body trembling with contained mirth, Gariath hooked his hands under the pup’s armpits and pulled him up to stare into his face.
From behind a short, blunted muzzle, the pup stared at his elder. His ear-frills were extended, not yet developed enough to be able to fold them. His wings were tiny flaps of skin hanging on his back, the bones not strong enough to lift them yet. His stubby little red tail wagged happily as he stared at Gariath through bright eyes.
That’s right
, Gariath remembered with a smile,
our eyes are supposed to be bright, not dark.
‘I almost got you,’ the pup growled. He bit at Gariath’s nose, the taller
Rhega
’s nostrils flickering.
‘I don’t know,’ Gariath replied with a thoughtful hum. ‘You’re a pup.’
‘I’m a
Rhega
.’
‘You’re small.’
‘I’m
big
.’
‘Big enough to be held like a pup, maybe.’
At that, the pup emitted a shrill snarl and bit Gariath’s finger. The sensation of tiny teeth grazing his tough hide was familiar. He remembered a pair of jaws nipping at him in such a way, two equally small voices insisting how big they were.
The smile he offered in response, however, did not feel so familiar.
‘Fine, you’re huge.’ Gariath laughed, dropping the pup.
The smaller
Rhega
landed with a growl and a scrabble of short limbs as he scrambled to his feet. Gariath, in response, fell to his own rear, taking a seat opposite the pup. He could not help but stare at the small creature; he had forgotten how small he had started as. The pup was tiny, but not weak, unharmed from the fall, back up and on all fours as he growled playfully at the older
Rhega
.
Did I ever growl like that?
Gariath asked himself.
Were my eyes ever so bright?
‘I might not be so big now,’ the pup said, making a feinted lunge at the older
Rhega
, ‘but my mother says I will be someday.’
And at the pup’s words, Gariath felt his smile drop, fade back into a frown.
He doesn’t know
, he realised.
And how could the pup know? He couldn’t see himself, couldn’t look at the way the sunlight occasionally passed through his body. He could not see the distance in his own eyes, suggesting just how long he had been so small. He could not see that the earth did not depress beneath him when he rolled and jumped.
He couldn’t possibly know he wasn’t alive any more.
‘What’s wrong?’ the pup asked, tilting his head to the side.
‘Nothing is wrong,’ Gariath replied, forcing the smile back onto his face. ‘It’s . . . just been a long time since I’ve seen one of you . . . one of us.’
‘Me, too,’ the pup said, plopping onto his rear end. ‘There used to be lots of us.’ He looked around the glade and frowned. ‘I wonder when they’re coming back.’
Tell him
, Gariath told himself,
he deserves to know. Tell him they’re not coming back.
‘I’m sure they will soon,’ Gariath replied instead.
Coward.
‘I hope so . . . they left a long time ago.’
‘Where did they go?’
The pup opened his mouth to speak, then frowned. He looked down at the earth dejectedly.
‘I . . . I don’t know.’
‘Then why are you still here? Didn’t your father take you with him when he left?’
‘My mother was supposed to,’ the pup replied. ‘My father left . . . long ago, long before she did.’
‘He died?’
‘I . . . think so. It’s hard to remember.’
The pup placed two stubby clawed hands on the tiny bone nubs that would someday be two broad horns.
Would have been
, Gariath corrected himself.
‘My head hurts thinking about it,’ the pup whined. ‘You’re not going anywhere, are you?’
‘Of course not,’ Gariath said, smiling. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Grahta,’ the pup said. ‘It means—’
‘
Strongest
,’ the older
Rhega
finished. He flashed a coy smile. ‘Are you sure it’s accurate?’ He prodded the pup, sending him tumbling over. ‘You don’t look very strong.’

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