Two Serpents Rise (27 page)

From above, he saw the ocean’s wounds: four stripes of water six feet broad and half a mile long, transparent from the sea’s surface to its floor. No fish moved in those channels, nor any other living thing. The God Wars had been fought over the oceans of Dresediel Lex, as well as the land and air. Even the sea bore scars. Ships sailed around the clear water, which rusted metal, warped wood, and rotted flesh.

The city retreated at their backs. Skyspires fell toward the horizon, spears to skewer the world. Left and right the Pax opened beyond the harbor’s shelter. Miles to the south, hidden from Dresediel Lex by a spur of rocks, the port of Longsands bristled with triple-masted sailing vessels and the superstructure towers of Craft-sped container ships. Few sailors would join in the evening’s revel. Shipmasters from the Shining Empire and Koschei’s kingdom knew better than to let their crews make landfall on Dresediel Lex during an eclipse. True Quechal gangs would roam the Skittersill tonight, in search of victims with the wrong color of skin or hair.

Bay Station swelled like a pustule on the horizon. Walls of Craft surrounded and protected the atoll and its tower. He drifted through them like a ship through sharp coral and jutting rocks. Dark shapes long as boats and sinuous as serpents circled under the water.

Caleb guided his opteran down toward the ocean.

Mal followed, but when he stopped five feet over the water’s surface, she balked, and shouted: “What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry. We’re safe.”

“Do you know what lives in this harbor?”

“Deaths-head coral, sharks, and gallowglasses. Maybe a star kraken, though I doubt one could get past the wards.”

“A gallowglass could grab you from there.”

“Barely.”

“One sting and you’d claw off your skin to stop the pain.”

He reached back to his neck, and brushed the opteran’s proboscis away. His dull sucking depression ceased, the creature’s arms unclenched, and he fell, arms pinwheeling, to the ocean.

He had made this trip many times, but experience did not dull the monkey panic of falling toward a sea full of teeth and poison. A strangled cry escaped his throat. Gray water struck him in the face and body. Pressure and pain illuminated his ribs, his right hip and cheek, shoulder and thigh. He inhaled through the pain, groaned, and lifted himself off the water.

The Pax gave beneath his hands like a firm bed covered in silk. Testing one leg, then the other, he worked his way to a crouch and stood. Ocean stretched behind him to the city, ahead to Bay Station and beyond. A wave nearly pitched him off balance, but he recovered. “Come on down,” he called up to Mal. “The water’s fine.”

“I remember a story,” she replied, “about two brothers who tricked a Tzimet king into killing himself, by pretending to cut off their heads and daring him to do the same.”

“Trust me.”

“That’s what they said in the story.” But she closed her eyes, released her opteran and fell, twisting through the air like a cat. She landed lightly, and rolled with the waves to her feet.

Standing, stable, Mal pressed her toe into the water and watched the ripples when she lifted her foot. Eyes closed, she repeated the experiment.

“Wild,” she said. “I can’t see anything keeping us afloat, with my eyes open or closed.”

“A club back east figured it out,” he replied. “One of those weird sensory deprivation tricks, for clients who happened to be Craftsmen, or Craftswomen.”

“What kind of club would want to blind its clients?”

“It has a particular clientele.” He bit his lip, wondering how to explain without going into detail. “The place calls itself Xiltanda,” which was one of the High Quechal names for hell.

“Ah.” She walked toward him unsteadily, shifting her weight to remain upright. “Why isn’t this in mass production? I’ve never heard of anything that could make Craft invisible to Craftswomen.”

“No sense mass producing a system that’s not cost effective. Soul for soul, this is the most wasteful piece of Craft in RKC. Lord Kopil likes it, though. Who am I to argue?”

“And so you walk on the water.”

“Not quite.” She pitched forward and he caught her outstretched hand. “If you’re not the right sort of person, you fall through into the ocean.”

“Disturbing.”

He didn’t disagree.

She turned west. An island lay two miles out, and from that island rose a matte black tower, like an arrow drawn to pierce the sky. A shadow crossed her face. “Bay Station,” she said, resigned. “I think I know what you plan to show me. I’d rather not see it.”

“I thought the same thing, the first time someone took me here.”

She drew back. A cool wind blew salt spray against his face.

“You need to see this,” he said.

“They’ll show me when it’s time.”

“I want to be the one who shares it with you.”

“Let’s go back to the shore. Watch fireworks. Have a nice evening.”

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s. But first I want to show you what I mean about sacrifice.”

Her eyes met his: black mirrors reflecting the passion of the sunset.

“Okay,” she said.

He bowed to her and walked toward the station. Out here, away from the shore, the sea no longer smelled of dead fish. “Have you spent much time on the water?” Caleb asked after a while.

“Some friends and I kayaked through the Fangs once, after graduation.”

“I didn’t know you could kayak in the Fangs.”

“Some of the bays are still tainted by the Cataclysm, so the kraken and sea serpents and the other big monsters stay away. Wards on the kayaks deal with little ones.” A tall wave rolled beneath their feet. “The ocean between the Fangs is warmer than the Pax, shallower. On calm days you can see all the way down to sunken Quechal cities overgrown with coral.” She sighed. “Why do you ask?”

“The path is sensitive to intent. The more I think about the station, the more it strays. If I don’t distract myself, we could walk all the way to Longsands, or into the center of the Pax.”

“Oh.”

“So,” he said. “Tell me about your trip to the Fangs.”

“We splashed around for two weeks; I was almost eaten. That was the end of the vacation, at least for me.”

“Eaten?”

“I was bored with the stars one night, and the ocean looked placid, inviting, rippled soft as molten glass. I took off my clothes, warded myself, and swam out.”

“Gods.”

“It wasn’t a good idea.”

“Wasn’t a good idea,” he said. “There are things in the Fangs that would eat you in one bite, wards or no wards.”

“Most of those don’t swim close to shore. I thought I was safe. The water was cool, the ocean dark. I’ve never felt such wonderful solitude.”

“What happened?”

“A riptide.”

“Oh.”

“I looked back and realized I was farther from our island than I thought, and no matter how I tried to swim back, the current bore me out. Panic took over. I forgot everything I knew and tried to swim against the tide, splashing and pulling and kicking, but it didn’t work. I tried to call for help, but I was too far away.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “It’s strange. You talk about something like that and the moment rushes back.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I was about to die. I remembered that riptides are strongest near the surface, and don’t extend far from side to side. I dove down and tried to swim parallel to the island’s shore, but I was tired. Then the gallowglass struck.”

“Qet and Isil,” he said, not realizing that he had sworn to gods.

“The water around me glowed green, and I was caught in a tangle of burning wires. Even with my wards, some of the poison made it through. For weeks afterward I looked like I had been flogged from head to foot with a barbed whip. I screamed, I’m not ashamed to admit, and the winding wires drew me up to the surface, toward the beast’s mouth. Which was lucky, in a way.”

“I think we have different definitions of lucky.”

“I was tired. If it hadn’t reeled me close to what passed for its brain, I couldn’t have struck it with the Craft. I drank the creature’s life, and used the strength I stole to guide me back to the island. My classmates found me the next morning, lying on the beach, passed out and wound with the stinging tendrils I hadn’t been strong enough to tear away. They launched a flare, and a nearby settlement soon sent help. I spent the rest of the vacation in bed. I don’t go to the ocean much anymore. I like the land. You can see what’s creeping up on you most of the time.”

Sand crunched beneath Caleb’s shoe, and he realized that they stood on the eastern beach of Bay Station, in the black tower’s shadow. As always on this journey, he had missed the moment of transition, when the island ceased to be a distant goal and appeared beneath and before him.

Watchmen waited atop a grassy bank overlooking the beach—burly, armed, the air around them thick with Craft and threat.

“Friends of yours?” Mal asked.

“No,” he said. “I’ll handle this.” Raising his hands, he strode forth to meet them.

35

Caleb and Mal descended into the island, paced by silent guards. The stair was long and winding, and pristine, like everything else in Bay Station. Every light was sun-bright, each corner swept.

“They keep house well,” Mal said.

“Dust can hide things,” Caleb whispered. The wide halls and open spaces made him nervous. “One of my father’s associates once tried to sneak a goddess in here, lodged in the dirt of his boot. She nearly took over the station before the King in Red stopped her.”

“I see.”

Their descent continued. Down side corridors, Caleb glimpsed the other station staff: academic Craftsmen in white laboratory robes, junior initiates arguing about thaumaturgical theory or professional sports, gray-shirted janitors living and undead, mopping floors and polishing windows.

On Caleb’s previous visits Bay Station had resembled the inside of an anthill, but tonight it was almost deserted. Everyone who could request time off for the eclipse had done so. The unlucky remainder would gather tonight in the observation tower to watch the fireworks and miss their families.

The staircase ended in a broad landing and a thick double door of cold iron, so wrought with wards and contracts that Caleb’s eyes refused to rest on its surface. The guards stood on opposite sides of the door, and placed their hands on the featureless white wall. Their wrists twisted at a particular angle, and silver-blue light shone around their fingers.

A glyph in the center of the doors blinked three times, and the world dissolved in darkness. Out of the darkness flashed a brilliant claw that pierced Caleb’s body and soul. The night broke, and the door ground open.

Beyond, white walls gave way to unfinished rock. Crude, primal symbols marked their path through the stone labyrinth.

“How old is this place?” Mal’s voice sounded small in the winding, echoing tunnels.

“There were Quechal colonists here before the city was founded. Since they lived so close to the Pax, they worshipped ocean-gods, predator-gods, rain-gods. Qet Sea-Lord was the center of the pantheon. After the Cataclysm, when so many Quechal moved up here, their heresy became dogma. We built new temples on land, Serpent-temples, sun-temples, but the old sacred caves remained out here.”

A rhythm resounded in his chest: a twinned concussion, two building-sized hammers beating against granite. Rocks shifted on the floor of their rough-hewn path.

“There’s still a god here,” she said.

“Yes.”

“We can go back. You don’t need to show me this.”

“I do. For my sake.”

The rhythm drew nearer. Caleb heard a rush of breaking surf.

The tunnel widened into a cavern. Stalactites hung like rotten teeth from the arching roof. Dark rock glittered wetly in the ghostlight.

The path split to circle an enormous pit. The percussion and the rolling ocean swell emanated from within.

“Is that what I think it is?” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her.

“Yes.”

She stopped, mouth half open, tense as a scared cat. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, mastering herself. Chin high, she strode past him to the pit’s edge, and looked down.

Caleb waited. He examined the thick pipes that lined the cave walls, the glyphs ancient and modern carved into stone. Too soon, he ran out of objects for his attention, and approached Mal, walking heavily so as not to startle her.

She stood straight, and still. He touched her arm and felt tension beneath the envelope of her skin. Her nostrils flared.

A god lay in the pit. No statue, no graven idol could compare to this imperial thing. Spread-eagled, suspended in dark water, he was the size of a mountain. His massive lips, softly parted, bared teeth as large as carriages. His eyes were sails, his chest broad as a pyramid. Legs and arms thick and long as magisterium trees hung limp in the dark water that lapped at his sides.

Unconscious, his silence was the silence of the sea. His slow indrawn breaths were the rolling tide, the sleeping twitch of his hand a hurricane. Eons past, in deep time, the first Quechal had looked out over the ocean, seen chaos, and given it form, and name, and life.

Qet Sea-Lord was not dead, but not alive, either. His closed eyes did not move like the eyes of a dreaming man. Thick metal pipes protruded from his arms, his chest, his neck, his corded thighs, to join the hive of plumbing below the surface of the water. Silver bands circled his chest. Before each breath, the bands glowed with unearthly light, and after each breath the light faded.

Caleb said the god’s name gently, knowing Mal would hear.

She recoiled from the pit. Her eyes flashed white, and shadow cohered about her skin. Her teeth grew long, pointed like fangs and gleaming. She towered above him. Ghostlights flickered and shattered on the walls; Mal hissed, and lightning cracked between the fingers of her outstretched hand. She swelled like a cloud of smoke above an erupting volcano.

“This is what I wanted to show you, Mal,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

The magnesium flames of her eyes burned into him, but he stepped forward and extended his hand, palm up and open. She glanced from him, to the pit, and back.