An Affinity for Steel, page 114
‘I guess,’ Lenk whispered, ‘that’s that.’
Through the groan of wood, the splintering of the ship’s ribs and the roar of great, gushing wounds filling with salt, he could hear a reply.
‘You’re surprised?’
Was the night cold or hot, he wondered? Should he feel as warm as he did at the sound inside his head?
‘I … came for them, didn’t I? I came for her. And she just—’
‘Left you. But it wasn’t just her.’
‘No, they all did, didn’t they?’
‘Distractions.’ The night turned freezing. ‘As we already knew.’
‘I remember … I trusted them, once, didn’t I? Towards the end there, I was enjoying their company. We were going to go back to the mainland together. Things were going to be all right, weren’t they?’
‘Not your fate.’
‘Not our duty.’
‘I suppose not.’
Water was seeping up around him, licking at his boots. The mast behind him started to groan; its foundations shattered, it protested once, then came crashing down to smash into the ship’s cabin. The world was crumbling beneath him and he stood facing the cold darkness below, alone.
‘So what now?’ he asked.
‘We kill.’
‘It ends.’
‘Conflict.’
‘Tell me,’ the voice, fever-hot whispered. ‘How far has killing gotten you?’
‘Do not listen,’ another, bone-cold, protested.
‘All fighting ends eventually.’ Fire-hot. ‘And by the end, what have you got but a heap of corpses? No one left to speak to, to lay your head upon, and it grows so heavy …’
‘Trickery. Lies.’ Snow-cold. ‘We have survived before. We survive, always.’
‘You’ve been killing for so long, fighting for so long. Even when you had the option to leave, you turned to fighting, and this is where it has brought you: alone, abandoned but for voices in your head. It’s time to listen to reason. It’s time to give up. It’s over.’
An inferno.
‘Ignore. Do not listen. Survive.’
A mild chill.
His hands fell to his side, sword from his hands, clattering to the drowning deck. The air turned to iron in his lungs, forced him to his knees. The water was not as cold as he expected, rising up around him and embracing him, a thousand tiny, lapping little hands, welcoming him into their fold, assuring him that they would never abandon him.
‘Rest now. Your wounds are great. Your head is heavy. You’ve done enough.’
A blanket of shadow, warm and comforting, fell over him, bidding his eyes close, bidding him to ignore the pain in his shoulder. He felt numb of his own volition, burrowing into his own body, leaving the rest of him senseless to a pair of massive hands being laid gently upon his shoulder.
‘You’ve fought so hard and for nothing. Let this be the end.’
He felt the fingers on his face, but could not feel the cold of the palms that pressed against either side of his head. The water was up to his waist now, the shadow engulfing him completely. Soon it would be over. Soon it would end.
And there would be no more pain.
‘NOT OUR TIME.’
Blood cold, brain frozen, muscles spasmed. His sword came to his hand, arm flew from his shoulder, found flesh and bit deeply. The screams were a disharmonic chorus, ringing from within and without a head that boiled and a body that froze.
He leapt to his feet, turned around.
And they were everywhere.
Bone-white hands, grasping railings and hauling up glistening hairless bodies onto the deck. Rivers of flesh pouring out from the companionway, glistening black eyes wide and needle-filled mouths gasping. Boiling out of the ship’s wounds, knotted clots of skin and teeth on salty, dark blood.
And among the frogmen, their masters walked. Three of the Abysmyths dominated the rapidly sinking deck, striding over their charges on skeletal black legs, pulling their emaciated bodies through the splintered wood. And before him, a great ebon tree leaking sap, the demon clutched the wound at its flank that Lenk’s sword had carved. Its vast, empty eyes strove to convey agony, just as its reaching, webbed claw strove to find Lenk’s throat.
‘Mother give me patience for the weak of heart,’ it croaked through a drowning voice. ‘I do what they cannot, through Your will.’
‘SURVIVE.’
Advice or command, it was all that the voice told him, and it was all he needed.
The webbed claw grasped the air where his head had been as he darted low and swung his sword up, driving it into the creature’s spear-thin midsection. It ate a messy feast, ichor dribbling from its metal maw and chewing through ribs as the blade and its wielder ignored the screams of the dying.
And yet, Lenk’s brain was set ablaze with another wailing scream.
‘STOP IT!’
As fervent and fiery as the command was, Lenk fought against it. When the voice’s words were not obeyed, it lashed out, searing his brain and boiling the blood in his temples. He staggered, rather than darted away, from the towering demon as it collapsed to its massive knees and then landed face-first in the water.
A wall of pale white flesh greeted him, broken only by the four wide white eyes that stared at him from above. The frogmen pressed toward him, feral hisses slithering from their gaping, needle-lined mouths, webbed glistening hands outreached. The Abysmyths towering over them picked their way carefully towards him, gurgling in the voices of men long claimed by the sea.
‘Absolution in submission,’ one of them croaked. ‘Atonement in acceptance.’
‘Mercy at the Shepherd’s crook,’ the other one said. ‘You cannot continue like this, lamb, wallowing in despair and in doubt.’
‘Mother bids us,’ the frogmen echoed in twisted, echoing harmony. ‘The Prophet commands us. All for you.’
They reached for him with free hands, clenched bone knives in the other. The Abysmyths’ jaws gaped, webbed claws open as if to invite him to get in. He saw his death reflected in every black, glossy stare and his life vanishing down every gaping gullet.
And, with no other plan, he heard the voice that spoke on freezing tongues.
‘Kill.’
And he obeyed.
He lunged forward, swinging the blade as he did. It gorged itself, cleaving through rubbery white flesh and spilling fluids into the water indiscriminately. Those frogmen that fell he used as stepping stones across the drowning deck, cleaving into more and more still as he made his way towards the railing, ignoring the fever-hot voice screeching at him.
‘PLEASE! THEY HAVE DONE NOTHING! SPARE THEM!’
They knotted at the railing, preventing him from hurling himself over before he could reach it. He didn’t care; there would be more of them under the water, anyway, in their element. His target was closer, taller and decidedly darker.
The Abysmyth reached for him, its four-jointed arm extending to snatch him from the deck in an ooze-covered claw. He ducked low beneath it, wrapped his arm about it and lashed out with his sword, gnashing at the creature’s shoulder. Its arm flailed with a shriek, pulling him up and over its skeletal body.
He bit back the pain in his shoulder and his head alike as he scrambled across the demon’s body, narrowly avoiding its many jagged teeth as he grabbed at the loose folds of leathery skin in its throat and swung himself onto its back. His sword went up, a fervent scream echoing through his head.
‘DON’T YOU TOUCH MY CHILDREN!’
It came down again.
The pain was agonising, the shrieks of the Abysmyth and the one in his skull making his ears ring. But he drove the blade into the creature’s back again and again, forcing it as deep as he could atop his precarious perch. Such a task only became harder as the creature flung itself into a flailing frenzy, swinging its arms in an attempt to remove the silver parasite from its back and succeeding only in smashing away those frogmen that rushed to its aid.
‘I tried! I tried!’ it wailed as it flailed wildly with one arm and clutched at its blossoming wounds with another. ‘Mother, I tried! But he won’t listen! He’s hurting me! It hurts!’
‘STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!’ the voice shrieked, pounding on his skull with fiery fists and sending waves of burning pain through his head.
He clung to the beast for as long as he could, despite the pain, but it took only another breath for him to feel the grasping water again. When he could see through the pain, he saw the deck vanished completely, swallowed by the rising tide. The frogmen stood calmly, their black eyes fixed on him as their heads slowly slipped beneath the water, glittering like onyxes even as their white flesh disappeared.
‘Survive,’ the voice whispered frigidly.
Between the two voices, there was no room in his head for contemplation about how infeasible such a command was quickly becoming. There was no room left for anything but a compulsion that pulled his eyes to the side, to the sole wooden salvation.
Blackened and splintering as it might have been, the sloping mast reached out like a pleading hand, the ship’s last, desperate attempt to keep above water. Fleeting as any salvation might have been, Lenk leapt for it anyway, leaving his demonic mount to sink beneath the waves.
It was far away, only growing smaller as it continued to slide under the water. He swam in a violent frenzy, kicking up froth as he struggled to bite back the pain in his shoulder and hold onto his sword as he did. Still, beneath his body, he could feel the presence of eyes staring, arms reaching.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something. A soft, blue light pulsing beneath the waves in a trio of azure heartbeats moved steadily towards him. Through the waves, through the pain, he could hear the whispers as they drew closer.
‘Noescapenoescapenoescapenoescape …’
‘Mercyathandmercyisheremercyforall …’
‘SheknowsSheseesShesympathisesgiveingiveingiveingivein giveingivein …’
‘No!’ the voice and he spoke as one as he found the mast and pulled himself out of the water, tumbling and facing the black water below.
The Abysmyth came rising up, its white eyes wide and stark in the gloom as it crept out, black claw glistening, reaching out of the water. He swung at it, the sword heavier in his hand than it had been, the pain in his limbs more pronounced. The beast accepted the blow, gurgling from below as it hauled the rest of its body onto the mast as he scrambled backwards.
The frogmen behind it moved with a similar inevitable purpose, staring at the blood-slick blade that had already seen its brethren, its masters spilt upon salt, without fear. They boiled up behind the Abysmyth, climbing over its body, onto the mast, reaching their webbed hands for Lenk.
He could feel the fear in his eyes, if not his head. He could see his wide stare reflected in the blade’s face. He could feel the blood seeping out of his shoulder, the fire searing his skull. What he couldn’t feel was the numbness, the callous cold that had swept over him and seized control before and delivered him. The voice was shrieking still, but it was faint, fading, disappearing behind a veil of fire and drowning in a sea of darkness.
He was alone. Abandoned.
‘Your song is ending, lamb,’ the Abysmyth croaked, reaching for him once again. ‘Fleeting sounds and errant voices offer no sanctuary. Things made of paper flesh and wooden bones provide no redemption.’
‘Forsakenforsakenforsaken …’
‘Abandonedabandonedabandoned …’
‘Noonenothingnobodyleftleftleft …’
‘But Mother hears you,’ the Abysmyth said, its eyes growing wider at the mention. ‘Mother wishes you to hear Her, to know what we know, to feel what we feel. Let Her speak. Let the pain end. Let the sinful thought end.’ Its claw reached out not to seize, but to offer, to beckon. ‘Let yourself hear.’
‘I … no …’ For lack of thought to do anything else, for lack of voice to say anything better, he shook his burning head. ‘I can’t … I can’t.’
‘Nolongeryourchoice …’
‘Nolongeranychoice …’
‘Letushelpyou …’
He heard the water rip apart beneath him, an eruption of froth at his back. He managed to see them in glimpses: soft lips within gaping needle jaws, bulging black eyes set in bulbous grey heads, long grey stalks of flesh pulsing with soft blue light. He managed to feel them as they wrapped scrawny grey claws around him, coiled eel-like tails about him, pressed withered breasts against his body.
He managed to scream only once before the mast shattered under their weight and they pulled him below.
Drowning wasn’t so bad.
Lenk absently wondered what the fuss was all about, really, as he continued to drift, pulled lower by liquid hands. The water was not as cold as it looked, enveloping him in a gentle warmth. It wasn’t as dark as he had suspected it would be, either. The creatures saw to that.
To call them ‘demons’ seemed a little insulting. Demons were twisted beings, foul things that found the natural world intolerable. These creatures, circling the waters far above him, their azure lights forming a bright halo, did not look so twisted. They were emaciated, true, with their bulbous heads at odds with their bony torsos, their slithering eel tails in place of legs. Below the surface of the water, though, they looked delicate instead of underfed, graceful instead of writhing.
And their whispering had become song.
He could hear it more clearly the deeper he drifted: lilting, resonating, wordless songs that carried through water and skin, seeping into him. They sang everything at once, lullabies and dirges, love and agony. It was a familiar song, one he had heard before. But he could not think of where, could not think of anything. With the song in his ears, there was no room left for any other sound. He found comfort in that. He found peace in the deep.
So much so that he didn’t know he shouldn’t be able to breathe.
That didn’t seem so important, though. There was no fear in the warm, welcoming depths, for drowning or for the corpses that sank around him. Down here, the anger was erased from the netherlings’ long faces, their eyes open and tranquil as they sank softly, shards of the ship drifting around them like unassembled coffins. Down here, the creatures that swam around him, with their black eyes and white skins, didn’t seem so menacing.
Down here, for the first time in weeks, he felt no fear.
‘Enjoying yourself?’
The voices came from nowhere, clear as the water itself. He caught a glimpse in the shadows surrounding him as something swam at the edges of the halo of light. A grey hide shifted, an axe-like fin tail swept through the water, manes of copper and black wafted like kelp in the water.
He remembered the Deepshriek.
She appeared. No, he reminded himself, it’s not a she. Rather, a face appeared, a soft and milk-white oval, framed by long and silky hair the colour of fire. Its eyes were golden and glittering above soft lips set in a frown. It drifted closer to Lenk and he saw the rest of it, the long grey stalk that served as its body snaking into the darkness.
Another head emerged, black hair lost in shadow, attached to an identical stalk. They circled him, as the hulking grey-skinned fish that the stalks crowned circled him. There was another stalk, hanging limp and bereft of a head. He remembered there had been another head. He remembered taking it.
He remembered the Deepshriek wanted to kill him for that.
That thought prompted the realisation of his lungs working. That realisation prompted his question.
‘Why am I alive?’
‘There was a time when sky and sea were not the petty rivals they are today,’ the Deepshriek answered in disjointed chorus. ‘They shared all. We remember that time. Ulbecetonth remembers that time.’ Their eyes narrowed to four thin slits. ‘This is Her domain.’
‘No, that wasn’t what I meant. Why am I not dead?’
‘Not because of us,’ the creature said. ‘We wanted you to die.’ The heads snaked around him, golden scowls and bared fangs. ‘You took our head. You destroyed our temple. You took the tome. You ruined everything. We wanted you to drown, to die, to be eaten by tiny little fish over a thousand years.’
‘And yet … here we are,’ he said, no room in the depths for fear.
‘We were overruled.’
‘By whom?’
The heads glanced at each other, then at Lenk, then through Lenk. He felt himself turning, spinning gently in the halo as unseen hands turned him upside down to face the sea floor. He stared for a moment and saw nothing.
And then, he saw teeth.
He tried to count them at a glance, absently, and found the task tremendous enough to make his head hurt. Rows upon rows of them opened, splitting the endless sandy floor into a tremendous smile.
‘Lenk.’ They loosed a voice, deep and feminine. ‘Hello.’
He stared into the void between them, vast and endless.
‘Hello,’ he replied, ‘Ulbecetonth.’
It laughed. No, he thought, it’s a she. And her voice was far more pleasant and matronly than a demon’s ought to be, he decided. Then again, he only knew the one. It was a comforting warmth, a blanket of sound that soothed the ache in his head, banished chill from his body.
He remembered this voice.
‘You’re not real, are you?’ he asked the teeth. ‘You’re in my head, just like your voice was.’
‘Voices inside your head can be entirely real,’ Ulbecetonth replied. ‘Have you not learned this by now?’
‘It’s simply a form of madness.’
‘If you hear voices, you’re mad. If you talk back, it’s something far worse.’
‘Point,’ he replied. ‘So are you real, then? Or am I dead?’ He glanced around the shadows. ‘Is this—?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘This is a far too pleasant to be hell; your hell, anyway. Murderers of children go to far darker, far deeper places.’
‘I have killed no—’
‘I told you to stop,’ the teeth said, twisting into a frown. ‘I begged you to spare my children. You killed them, regardless. Both of you.’
‘There was only one of me.’
‘There is never only one of you.’
He took in a deep breath that he should not have been able to.
