The Skybound Sea

EIGHT

Three hours after they had left Teji, they had found the mist, and the world that Lenk knew ceased to have any meaning.

It had been dark when they arrived. The sun had slipped quickly away from them, unwilling to watch. The water was a deep onyx, the sky was indigo, and the distant trees of Teji’s greenery could not have been diminished even in the dying light.

The mist did not come out of nowhere, did not come rolling in with any flair for the dramatic. It was there, existing as it always had. It didn’t shift as they came closer, didn’t see a need to impress them. It had been there long before they arrived. It would be there long after they were all dead.

Lenk wasn’t sure how long they had been in there. Time seemed to be another one of those things that the mist didn’t see a need for.

Everything within the mist was gray, a solid, monochrome mass that hung around on all sides. Not oppressive, Lenk noted; it couldn’t be bothered to be oppressive, just as it couldn’t be bothered to recognize nightfall or moonlight or any sky beyond its own endless gray.

The sole exception was the sea. The mist still recognized it, as an old man acknowledges an old tree, impassive and careless for the world going on around it. And, as such, it was granted the privilege of being the only source of sound within the mist: the gentle lapping of waves as the ship bobbed about upon them, the soft hiss of foam dissipating.

The squish of blood-tinged insect innards being shoveled out over the railing in handfuls spoiled the mood slightly.

He fought down his revulsion and watched Kataria’s plan in action. With her fingertip to forearm coated in glistening, sticky ichor, the shict seemed to have no such squeamishness. With a sort of unnerving mechanical monotony, she reached into the bucket and hoisted out another handful of bug guts to pour over the side and add to the long line of floating innards they had left behind them.

She nodded at the ensuing splash, brushing her hands off as though that might make a difference.

“I’ll let that stew for a bit and then shovel in the next load,” Kataria said, turning to him. “Hopefully there’s enough here to work, otherwise we’ll just start tossing anything else that’s pungent and moist and see if that takes.”

Lenk stared at her for a moment. “So, do you sit around thinking of precisely the right words to horrify me or do they just come to you?”

“It’s been a long trip,” she said. “I’ve had time. But that’s not important.” She gestured to him with her chin. “How’s the shoulder?”

Well, now that you mention it, Lenk said inwardly. It feels amazing. Despite having attempted to cauterize my own wound and opening myself up for severe infection, I feel absolutely no pain or so much as a stiff kink. As well it might, what with the voice in my head chanting “you will feel no pain,” over and over.

He blinked as she stared at him expectantly.

Probably shouldn’t say that.

“Agreed,” the voice chimed in from the back of his head.

That wasn’t meant for you.

“Tell her nothing. She does not need to know. She does not need to hear. She will die. Our duty will go on.”

“So. . what?” Kataria asked after the long, noisy silence. “Stupefied silence means. . good? Bad?”

“Fine,” he said.

“Good. We’re going to need it for the plan.” She turned to Gariath, who sat beside the rudder, claws meticulously working on something in his lap. “And that.”

Despite the vow he had made to himself never to let his eyes get anywhere near the dragonman’s lap, Lenk couldn’t help but peer over. A spear, long and thick and made of unreliable-looking wood, lay upon Gariath’s kilt. A knot, thick and inelegant, occupied his attentions as it trailed from the rope pooled about his feet.

He seemed neither particularly interested in the job he was doing, nor the people looking at him. That fact emboldened Lenk enough to speak, albeit in a whisper.

“I don’t know how comfortable I am with a plan that puts an uncomfortable looking piece of wood in Gariath’s hands,” he whispered to Kataria.

“You don’t trust him?”

“The circumstances of this and the last time we were in a boat are pretty similar. You’ll recall he had a spear that time, too. And that ended with us nearly drowning.”

“He tried to kill you,” the voice whispered, “he’s done it before. He will do it again. So will she.”

“True,” Kataria replied, scratching her chin. “And yet, each of us has almost killed everyone else at some point. I guess I have a hard time holding that against them anymore.”

“Point being, that’s always been by accident,” Lenk said.

“Lies,” the voice countered silently.

“Or by some other weird happenstance,” he continued, trying to ignore it. “Gariath is nothing if not direct. There’s no telling what he might do.”

She cast a sidelong glare upon him. “Men who frequently go into raving, violent fits for no reason are in a poor position to accuse others of unpredictability.”

“I’d rest easier,” Lenk spoke a little more firmly, “if I knew exactly why he’s here.”

“You told him to come.”

“Like that’s ever been a factor in what he does.”

“Well, you wanted him here.”

“Yes, but why-”

“Because he can pound a man’s head into his stomach.”

“I wasn’t finished,” he snapped. He cast a glare over his shoulder, to the dragonman that had yet to look up. “He’s been fascinated with the Shen. He didn’t try to stop them when they attacked us nights ago. I mean, they tried to kill us and he wants to. .”

“Kill us,” the voice whispered. “Betray us.”

“He’s going to. .”

“Destroy us. Murder us.”

“He’s. .”

“Weak. Treacherous. Going to die. We’re going to kill them.”

“He. .” Lenk felt his own voice dying in his throat. “Kill. .”

A pair of hands seized him, pulled him around roughly.

Lenk had never felt entirely comfortable under Kataria’s gaze; her eyes were too green, they hid too much and searched too hard. When they looked over him, seeking something he had no idea whether he even had, he felt naked.

And now that she stared at him, past him, searching for nothing, seeing all she needed to, he felt weak.

“Don’t,” she said, simply and sternly.

“What?”

“Don’t,” she said. “Whatever you’re thinking, no. It’s not. It never was. Don’t.”

“But you can’t-”

“I can. I will. Don’t.”

“But-”

“No.”

He nodded, stiffly. The world was silent.

Until Kataria looked to Gariath, anyway.

“How’s it look?” she asked.

The dragonman held it up, in all its jagged, rusted glory, and gave a derisive snort. “Third most useless thing on this ship.” He set it to the side. “Fourth if I use that bucket of slop for holding something.”

“Like what?” Lenk asked.

“Whatever’s left of you, if we spend another hour out here doing nothing.”

Absently, the young man thought he might have a harder time blaming Gariath for that. Thus far, Kataria’s plan had yielded nothing more than a lot of time sitting in the middle of a great, gray nothingness, learning the subtle differences in aroma between the thorax and the antennae of a giant dead cockroach.

Not that the efforts aren’t completely unappreciated, he thought as he peered over Gariath’s horns.

Dredgespiders, dog-sized and many-legged, glided in their wake. Heedless of the mist’s authority, they capered across the surface of the water, spinning great nets of silk behind them, which they used to trap the floating innards and spirit them away from hungry competitors.

“We can kill her right now,” the voice whispered. “Find Jaga on our own. Easier to infiltrate, easier to navigate. Without her. Everything will be easier without her. Her plan does nothing.”

His eye twitched. “You raise a good point.”

“Hmm?”

He turned back to her. “What, exactly, is your plan? So far, we’ve been doing nothing but hoisting guts into the water and waiting.”

“Oh, sorry,” she replied with a snarl. “I should have asked about your plan for finding the mysterious island of death shrouded in a veil of mist-” she paused, pointed up at their limp sail, “-with no wind.” She folded her arms challengingly. “Since we’re waiting and all.”

“Well, my plan was to bob in the water for eternity while contemplating the choices I had made in my life that had led me to agree to the half-cocked plan of a woman whose natural scent is somehow improved by the perfume of rotting, blood-tinged insect guts,” he snapped back. “Of course, since I had deduced this to be an integral part of your plan, I didn’t want to steal your glory.”

“The plan calls for bait,” she said. “Whether said bait is stunted, ugly, and sarcastic is not specified.”

“But this is?” he asked, making a sweeping gesture around him. “How could this possibly get us any closer to Jaga?”

“The plan does not allow for senseless inquiry!”

“It’s not senseless to question-”

“The plan will not be questioned!”

“Someone has to!” he all but shouted back. “I’ve gone this far on faith that you don’t deserve! I need to know something for me to think that any of this is going to work! Bait? Bait for what? Why does it have to have Gariath’s blood in it? What are we waiting for?”

His voice did not echo. The mist swallowed it whole, leaving only silence. A silence so crisp that it was impossible not to hear the sound of Gariath’s nostrils twitching as he drew in a breath and a scent upon it.

The dragonman rose, gripping the spear tightly as he turned and stared out over the water. Man and shict followed, three gazes cast out upon the long trail of bobbing, glistening guts behind them and the dredgespiders that danced amongst them.

For but a single breath longer.

All at once, the insects scattered silently, scurrying into the mist and disappearing inside its gray folds. The mist seemed to close in, as though the silence had grown too uncomfortable even for it and it sought to draw in upon itself. It was dense. It was dark.

Not nearly dark enough to obscure the roiling ripples in the sea, the massive black shadow that bloomed beneath them, the great crest that jutted from the water and followed the line of bait.

Quickly. And right toward them.

“The answer to all of your questions,” Kataria whispered breathlessly, “is that.”

It came cresting out of the waves, a wall of water rising before it. Through the mist and spray, they could see parts of it: the sharp, beak-like snout, the shadow-dark azure of its hide, and the single eye burning a bright, furious yellow through the water.

“Down!” Kataria shrieked, seizing the railing and holding on.

What else does one do when being charged by an Akaneed? Lenk thought as he followed suit.

Gariath, however, remained unmoving. He stood stoically at the rudder, baring the slightest glint of teeth in a small, deranged smile that grew broader as the great shape barreled closer toward them.

“I knew you’d come back,” he growled.

“Damn it, Gariath,” Lenk shouted. “I thought we were done with this! Grab something and get down!”

Apparently, lunacy was not something the dragonman was ever quite done with. He extended his broad arms to the side, a mother embracing a giant, roaring child.

“Come and get me,” he said to the sea.

And the sea spoke back, in a cavernous howl from a gaping maw.

The wave struck before the beast did, a great wash of salt that swept over the vessel’s deck and sent Lenk straining to keep from being washed away. Salt blinded him, froth choked him, he had barely enough sense to see if Kataria had held on, let alone for the beast rising out of the water.

The sudden shock that jolted the ship and sent him sprawling, however, was impossible to ignore.

One hand grasping desperately at the railing, the other pulled back a sopping curtain of hair to behold the sight of teeth. The rudder, the railing, the entire rear of the vessel had disappeared behind the great row of white needles, the wood loosing an anguished, splintering groan as the Akaneed’s bellowing snarl sent timbers trembling in its grip.

Lenk’s eyes swept the deck, soaking, choking and half-blind. Of their companion, there was no sign but the spear lying upon the deck, tangled amidst the rope.

“Where the hell is Gariath?” he bellowed over the cacophony of ship and serpent.

“How should I know?” Kataria screamed back.

“This plan is terrible!”

“THIS ISN’T PART OF THE PLAN!” she shrieked.

It wasn’t until Lenk’s sword was out in his hand that he took stock of the beast before him. From its thick hide, a single eye stared back at him, burning with more than enough hatred for the missing eye. That one had been put out long ago by the very dragonman that was now inconsiderately drowning somewhere overboard. They had met this Akaneed before.

His sword hadn’t been much use then, either.

The beast let out a reverberating snarl, its head jerking down sharply. The boat followed it down with a wooden shriek, its deck tilting up and sending Lenk’s legs out from under him and his grip slipping from the salt-slick railing.

He skidded down the deck with a cry, striking against the beast’s snout and kicking wildly against its slippery hide as he scrambled for purchase. Pressed against it, he couldn’t hear Kataria’s cries over the heated snort of its breath and the throaty rumble of its growls. He could see her, though, one hand clinging to the railing, the other reaching down futilely for him.

He clawed desperately against the vertical deck, ignoring the pain in his fingers, ignoring the red that stained the deck as he sought to jam his blade into it and haul himself up. He had just drawn it back when the ship buckled sharply again, sending him skidding.

The last thing he saw was the beast’s mouth open a little wider.

When it came crashing shut behind him, there was only a wet, pressing darkness and the stench of old fish.

He balanced precariously upon the stern of the upended vessel, the wood splintering, snapping beneath his feet as the timbers were ground between the glistening muscles of the beast’s gullet. They closed in upon him, pressing his left arm to his chest, closing in upon his head, growing tighter with each shuddering breath.

Above him, a gate of teeth had shut out sky and sound. Below him, a guttural growl rose from a black hole of a throat that drew closer with each shudder of the ship. His mind flooded, panicked thoughts tearing through his skull, incomprehensible, indistinguishable.

Why isn’t Kataria doing anything?

Except that one.

“She does nothing.”

And that one, though it didn’t really quite count as his thought.

“Sword.”

What?

“SWORD.”

The answer became as solid as the steel in his hand the moment he stopped looking up and down and stared straight ahead.

At the glistening wall that was the roof of the beast’s mouth.

He had a distinct memory of drawing the blade back, plunging it into a thick knot of muscle, and wrenching it free with a vicious twist of metal. Past the great burst of blood that came washing over him, the agonized roar that accompanied it, everything was a blur. The ship crashed back into the sea, his sword clattered to the deck as it upended. He did not.

There was a floor beneath him again, but it was sticky and writhing and reeking and shifting violently beneath him as the beast pulled back. He felt himself flying on a cloud of fine red mist, chased by a wailing, anguished howl across the sky that crashed into the sea behind him.

He was aware only of the water pressing in around him, of the need to breathe. He tore through it, finding the surface. When he broke, it was with a wrenching gasp.

Around him, the mist settled. The water lapped. The foam hissed and dissipated. Gentle sounds. Poor companions to the thunder of his heart and rasping of his breath.

“Lenk!”

The voice, too, was gentle and distant.

“Lenk!”

A poorer match to the sight he saw as he turned in the water and found Kataria, far away upon the ship, soaked to the bone and bow in hand. Her voice was far too soft for the frantic gestures she made.

“GET OUT OF THE WATER, MORON!”

That was more like it. Even better when he followed her pointing finger over his head and saw the great fin sweeping out of the mist and bearing down on him.

“Hopeless” was the word that kept echoing in his head as he kicked and pulled against the water, flailing more than swimming toward the woefully distant ship. He didn’t have to see the shadow in the water behind him to know his escape was futile; Kataria’s arrows, flying over his head in a vain attempt to slow the beast, did that well enough.

His body went numb with the effort, the exertion too much to keep going. He was tired, far too tired to scream when the water erupted in front of him.

Gariath, for his part, didn’t seem to mind. He barely even seemed to notice the young man as his massive arms and wings began to work as one, pulling him through the water toward the ship. Lenk thought to cry out after him, had he the voice to do so.

The sensation of a tail tightening as it wrapped about his ankle removed the need.

He was pulled behind the dragonman, feeling rather like a piece of bait as his companion moved swiftly through the water despite the added weight. He sporadically bobbed up and down, gulping down frantic air and misplaced salt as he rose above and fell below the surface with each stroke of the dragonman’s arms. He tried to hold his breath, tried to shut his eyes.

Because every time he opened them, he could see the gaping, toothy cavern of the Akaneed’s maw drawing closer, the vast column of its body lost in the depths behind it, the fire of its yellow eye burning as it bore down upon them. After the third time, he stopped trying to ignore it and simply waited to feel giant jaws sever him in half.

As it was, he heard only the sound of them snapping shut. He was hauled violently from the water, sputtering and coughing as Gariath hauled himself and his frail cargo onto the ship.

The dark shadow swept beneath them, the great wave following in its wake sending their vessel rocking violently beneath them as it vanished into the sea. Lenk strained to keep on his feet as the deck settled along with the sea, waiting for the beast to return.

After a moment of silence, he dared to speak.

“Is it gone?”

“No,” Gariath replied.

“How can you be sure?”

“Because it hasn’t killed me yet.”

While certain it made sense to Gariath, Lenk had neither nerve nor intent to ask him to explain. Instead, he looked to Kataria, breathing heavily and pulling wet hair from her face. She turned a wary and weary gaze upon him.

“You all right?”

“Relatively,” he muttered, sweeping an eye around the deck. “Did we lose anything?”

“One of the bags of supplies.”

“Which one?”

“The big one.”

“Oh, good. Just the one with all the food and the medicine, then.” He rubbed his neck, easing out an angry kink in his spine. “I assume we don’t need those. Not with your plan to guide us.”

“For someone who wants to find an island no one knows the location of, you’re awfully picky about how we get there,” Kataria replied, glaring at him. “We’ve still got that.” She pointed to the spear, tangled amidst the rope upon the deck. “That’s all we need.”

“Maybe it’s the concussion affecting my reasoning, but I can’t help but suspect that one needs slightly more than a rusty spear to kill a serpent the size of a tree.”

“How would killing it help us?”

His face screwed up. “I’d love to answer, but I don’t think I was prepared to hear anything quite that insane today.”

“The fact that we are not trying to kill something is insane?”

An unsettling question, he noted, one that would be far less unsettling had it not been accompanied by her stare. Eyes like arrowheads, hers jammed into his, hard and sharp and aimed at something he could not see in his own head.

Something cold and cruel that didn’t want to be seen.

“I need you to trust me.”

“I can’t.” The answer came tumbling out on a hot breath, on his own voice and no one else’s. He shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“I know.”

She flashed him a smile, something old and sick and full of tears. She walked toward him slowly, hands held up before her, as though she approached a frightened beast and not the man she had kissed, not the man she had betrayed.

“I’m not going to apologize for it,” she said.

“I don’t want apologies.”

She was before him. He could feel her warmth through the chill of water. He could see her clearly through the haze of the fog. He could hear her. Only her.

“Then let me give you what you want,” she whispered. “Lenk, I-”

Her voice was drowned in the crash of waves and thunderous roar as the sea split apart before them. They cowered beneath the railing, a great wave sweeping over them and sending their vessel rocking violently. Lenk looked up and beheld only the writhing blue column of the creature’s body, the rest lost to the mist as he stared upward.

And, like a single star in a dead sky, a yellow eye stared back at him.

Absorbed as he might have been in the creature’s stare, Kataria shared no such fascination. He could hear her bow sing a mournful tune as she let an arrow fly into the fog, aiming for the eye.

“The spear!” she screamed over her shoulder as she drew another arrow. “The spear! Hit it! Hit it now!”

The deck trembled with Gariath’s charge, arm drawn back and splintering spear in hand as he rushed to the bow and hurled the weapon. It sailed through the air, rope whipping behind it before it bit into the beast’s hide with a thick squishing sound.

Undeterred by the length of wood and rusted steel jutting from its hide, the beast began to crane toward them, the eye growing larger. A curse accompanied each wail of arrow as Kataria sent feathered shafts into the mist.

And still, the beast came. Each breath brought it closer, taking shape in the wall of gray: the great crest of its fin, the jagged shape of its skull. Within three breaths, Lenk could almost count the individual teeth as its jaws slid out of the fog and gaped wide.

He wondered almost idly, as he brought his impotent sliver of steel up before the cavernous maw, how many it would take to split him in half.

If the answer came at all to him, it was lost in a fevered shriek of an arrow flying and the keening wail of a beast in pain. The missile struck beneath the beast’s eye, joining a small cluster of quivering shafts in the thin flesh of its eyelid.

“Didn’t think I knew where I was shooting, did you?” Kataria shrieked, though to whom wasn’t clear. “Did you?”

The Akaneed, at a distinct loss for replies that didn’t involve high-pitched, pained screeches, chose instead to leave the question unanswered. Its body tipped, falling into the ocean where it disappeared with a resounding splash.

“See? See?” Kataria’s laughter had never been a particularly beautiful noise, though it had never grown quite as close to the sound of a mule as it did at that moment. “I told you it would work! Damn thing’s not going to risk its only eye just to kill you.”

“I should have killed it,” Gariath muttered, folding massive arms over massive chest. “It deserved better than you.”

She sneered over her shoulder at him. “Maybe it just thought I was prettier.”

“What. .” Lenk had hoped to have something more colorful to say as he stared out over the waves, “what was that?”

“That,” Kataria replied, “was the plan. To lure the thing out and then send it running. Any wounded animal will always flee to its lair.” Her ears shot up triumphantly. “In this case. .”

“Jaga,” Lenk finished for her. His eyebrows rose appreciatively. “That. . almost makes sense.”

“Almost?” she asked, ears drooping slightly.

“Well, what was the spear for?”

A faint whistling sound brought their attention to the rope sliding across the deck.

“Oh, right.” She bent down, plucking up the rope and sturdying herself against the bow. “Pick that up.” She looked past Lenk to Gariath, “Mind grabbing the rudder? This is the part I didn’t really think out.”

Lenk plucked up the thick rope. He opened his mouth to inquire but found reason to do so lacking. Everything became clear the moment he felt the tug on the rope and felt the boat move.

Questions did tear themselves from his mouth, though: noisy ones, mostly wordless, mostly curse-filled. If any answers came back, he didn’t hear them, what with all the screaming.

It was funny, he thought as he was jerked violently forward, but he had never before thought of arm sockets as a liability. As he was pulled from his feet and slammed upon the deck, though, he wondered if it might not have been easier if his arms had just been torn off and gone flying into the mist with the rest of the rope.

That thought occurred to him roughly a moment after he skidded across the slick timbers to crash against the railings and a moment before instinct shouted down rational thought.

Get up, it screamed. Get up!

He did so, staggeringly. And even when he found purchase, it didn’t last long. Even as the vessel tore through the water, pulled along by its unwilling, bellowing beast, the deck slowly slid beneath his feet. He was dragged forward, skidding across the timbers until he came chest-to-back with Kataria.

The shict stood her ground, bracing with her legs spread and feet firmly against the bow as she leaned back and held on tight. He slid into her stance as he collided with her, the rope slipping out of his hands briefly.

She let out a sharp cry as she was jerked forward, looking as though the thing would pull her over at any moment. He snatched up the rope again, feeling it gnaw angrily at his palms as he struggled to regain his grip.

“Hold on!” Kataria shrieked to be heard over the roar of waves beneath them and the bellowing of the Akaneed before them.

“I am!” he cried back, seizing the rope and holding it tightly.

“Hold on!” she screamed again.

“I said I was!”

“HOLD ON!”

“That’s not as helpful as you might think!”

“LEFT!”

It became clear she was talking to Gariath about the same time it became clear that they were about to die.

A great rock face, jagged and gray, came shooting out of the mist, seeming to have risen out of the very ocean just to stop them. It passed them with a breathless scream as Gariath snarled and jammed hard on the rudder, angling them out of the way and denying stony teeth a meal of more than a few splinters.

More came out of the endless gray on stony howls and wordless whispers as they sped past, until it came to resemble less a sea and more a forest, with granite trees rising up around them in great, reaching number. Kataria continued to cry out commands, Gariath continued to grunt and to strain against the rudder.

And in the shadows painted ashen against the mist, Lenk thought he could see things other than the stone faces. Great, man-shaped things that rose from the water and extended thick hands as if to ward off the mist. Thin, skeletal arms reaching out of the sea with tatters of flesh hanging from their knobby and broken fingers.

What are those? He squinted his eyes to see more clearly. Masts? Ship masts?

“Down!” Kataria shrieked as she fell to the deck.

Yes, he thought as a yardarm yawned out of the fog directly in front of him and struck him squarely against the chin, ship masts.

The rope tore itself from his grasp as his hands became concerned with the matter of checking to see how many pieces his jaw was in. One, fortunately, albeit one with a few splinters jutting from it.

“Up,” a voice urged him through gritted teeth. “Up!”

He looked to Kataria straining against the rope, barely holding on. He scrambled for it, but as he rose to his feet again, something stopped him from reasserting his grip.

“Let go,” the voice whispered inside his head. “Let her fly. Let her die as she let you die.”

“Lenk!” Kataria cried, pulling hard against the rope.

“Let her go. Turn upon the other traitor.”

“Lenk!”

“Kill.”

He began to miss the silence.

And yet the voice was soft. His muscles were burning, his head was warm. He felt no chill. The voice didn’t command. It had seen her betray him, heard him call out to her, watched her turn her back on him. In some part of him, free from the voice, he wanted to let go.

Such a flimsy thing, so weightless. It would be such a trifling matter to let go. And who could blame him?

The voice did not repeat itself. It didn’t have to.

The ship buckled under a sudden pull. She hauled herself backward. He felt her crash against him, felt her muscle press against his, felt her growl course from inside her to inside him.

He felt her warmth.

“I won’t let go,” she snarled, perhaps to him. “Not again.”

She didn’t.

Neither did he.

Not that he wasn’t sorely tempted to as another great rock came shrieking soundlessly out of the fog.

“Right,” Kataria screamed as the rock grew closer. “RIGHT!” She screamed as the ship drifted into its path. “GARIATH, YOU-”

In a wail of wood, her curse was lost. The rocky teeth bit deeply into the vessel, smashing timbers and sending shards screaming. They cowered, but did not let go, holding onto the rope only narrowly keeping them from flying off in the haze of splinters and dust.

When they cleared the rock, they had left the railing and most of the deck with it. Water began to rise up onto the deck as the boat shifted awkwardly with its new weight.

“What the hell was that, Gariath?” Lenk cried over his shoulder. “She said ‘right!’”

“I know,” the dragonman snarled, as he rose up and picked his way across the slippery deck. “I chose to go left.”

“Why?”

“I’ve just been choosing which way to go on my own.”

“Kataria’s been calling out-”

The dragonman stopped beside him and held a hand up, the rudder’s handle clutched firmly in it. . the rest of it somewhere else. Lenk looked up, bulging eyes sweeping from the shattered rudder to the violent mess that had once been the vessel’s stern. When he looked back to Gariath, the dragonman almost looked insulted.

“Oh, like I’m not justified in ignoring her,” he snorted, tossing the useless hunk of wood overboard. His snort turned to a snarl as he reached out and seized the rope. “This was getting obnoxious, anyway.”

His strength was all that allowed them to hold on as the vessel, without rudder or hope, went sweeping wildly across the sea. Rocks flew past them, some avoided, most not, each one claiming a piece of their ship.

Yardarms and masts of dead ships cropped out of the water with increasing frequency. Statues of great robed figures rose up around them, hands outstretched before them. The mist began to thin, giving sight to something in the distance.

Vast.

Dark.

Jaga, he thought. It worked. He could hardly believe it. Kataria actually managed to-

He should have known better than to think that.

Where the crop of rock had come from, he had no idea. Unlike its massive and braggart brothers, this one rose shyly out of the water, extending just its jagged brow above the surface as if to see what was going on.

As it happened, that was more than enough to completely ruin everything.

The boat all but disintegrated beneath their feet, the rope torn from their hands as they came to a sudden and angry stop. Three voices cried for it, six hands scrambled, trying to seize it, trying to seize anything but air as they went tumbling haplessly through the air alongside planks and splinters to crash into the water.

What followed was a confusion of drowning voices, sputtering commands and flailing limbs all centered around a singular, urgent need.

“Out!” Lenk cried. “Out of the water!”

His vessel bobbing haplessly around him in pieces, his attentions became fixed on the distant outcropping of rock. It rose up from a base so jagged and insignificant, it might as well not be there. But he stood a better chance on land than he did flailing in the water.

As good a chance as one typically stood against a colossal sea serpent, anyway.

He kicked his way to the great pillar rising stoically out of the sea, scrambled around its base as he searched for a place to hoist himself up amidst the jagged rocks.

And yet, he found no jagged rocks, no insubstantial footing. Slick, sturdy stone greeted his wandering grasp, a small landing, more than enough for a man to stand comfortably upon, grew out of the rock’s face. It was smooth, too smooth to be natural. Someone had carved it.

He might have wondered who, if a clawed hand wrapping around his neck hadn’t instantly seized his attentions. Gariath didn’t seem to care, either, as he callously threw the young man out from the water and onto the landing. He hauled himself up afterward, spreading his wings and shaking his body, sending stinging droplets into Lenk’s eyes.

“Watch it,” Lenk muttered.

“If you said less stupid things, you’d have credibility to resent me when I called you stupid,” the dragonman replied crisply, folding his wings behind him.

“Would you call me stupid less?”

“No. But I might feel a little less good about it.”

Lenk opened his mouth to retort when his eyes suddenly went wide, sweeping over the sea.

“Where’s Kataria?”

The first answer came with an uncaring roll of Gariath’s broad shoulders.

The second, slightly more helpful answer came from the bubbles rising up beside the landing. A sopping mess of golden hair, frazzled feathers and sputtering gasps emerged moments later. With some difficulty, it made its way over to the landing and hooked an arm onto the stone. It looked up at them, the only thing visible through the mess of wet straw being an angry, canine-bared snarl.

“Help me, you idiots,” Kataria snapped. “I didn’t go back to get your stupid supplies so I could die for them.”

She seemed less than annoyed when Gariath took her by the arms and hauled her effortlessly from the water, callously dropping her and the stuff she carried to the landing. Steel rattled upon stone, a blade sliding away from her to rest at Lenk’s feet like a waiting puppy.

“You. .” he whispered, reaching down to take it by the hilt with a slightly unnerving gentleness, “went back for my sword.”

“You’re useless without it,” she muttered. She rose up, kicked a sopping leather satchel toward him. “And these are useless without you.”

“The small bag?”

“It looked important.”

“There’s no food in it,” he said, looking at her askew. “There’s nothing in them.”

Except my journal, he thought.

She stared at him intently, as though she could stare past his befuddled eyes and into his thoughts. She snorted, pulling wet hair behind her head and callously wringing it out.

“Important to someone, then,” she said.

“Right,” he said, voice fading on a breeze that wasn’t there.

It wasn’t lost on her, though; her long ears, three ragged notches to a length, twitched with an anxious fervor, swallowing his voice. Her entire body seemed to follow suit, the sinew of her arms flexing as she twisted her hair out, naked abdomen tensing, sending droplets of salt dancing down the shallow contours of her muscle to disappear in the water-slick cling of her breeches.

And amidst all the motion of her body, only her eyes remained still, fixated. On him.

Absently, he wondered if it was telling that he only seemed to notice her in such a way before or after a near death experience.

“Stairs.”

He startled at the sound; Gariath’s voice felt something rough and coarse on his ears. Almost as rough and coarse as his claws felt wrapped around his neck. The dragonman hoisted him up, turned him around sharply to face them: a narrow set of steps, worn by salt and storm, spiraling up around the pillar of rock.

“Right,” Lenk whispered, shouldering sword and satchel alike, “stairs.”

Nothing more need be said; no one needed a reason to get farther away from the water. The mist thinned as they followed it to the top, though not by much. When feet were set upon the smooth, hewn tableau of the pillar, it was still thick enough to strangle the sun, if not banish it entirely.

Perhaps the light was just enough to let them see it clearly. Perhaps there was no mist thick enough to smother it entirely from view. But in the distance, still vast, still dark, loomed an imposing shape.

“Jaga,” Lenk whispered, as though speaking the name louder might draw its attention.

“It doesn’t look like an island,” Kataria said, squinting into the gloom. “Not like any I’ve seen, anyway.” She shrugged. “Then again, I’ve never seen an island with a walkway leading conveniently to it.”

True enough, there it was. However narrow and however precarious, a walkway of stone stretched from the end of the pillar into the mist toward the distant island.

“I’ve never heard of a giant rock that had such a neat and tidy top,” Lenk replied, tapping his feet upon the hewn tableau. “Nor ones with naturally occurring staircases, either. Not that it wasn’t nice of them, but why would the Shen carve any of this?”

“They didn’t.”

There was an edge in Gariath’s voice, less coarse and more jagged, as though he took offense at the insinuation. As Lenk turned about, met the dragonman’s black, narrow glare, he felt considerable credence lent to the theory.

“And how do you know?” the young man asked.

“Because I do,” Gariath growled.

“He knows them,” the voice whispered, gnawing at the back of Lenk’s skull, “because he is them. Your enemy.”

“Well, he would know, wouldn’t he?” Kataria muttered. “Ask a question of reptiles, get an answer from a reptile.”

“He betrayed you once for them.”

Lenk shook his head, tried to ignore the voice, the growing pain at the base of his head.

“The Shen wouldn’t build this,” Gariath said, “because they are Shen.”

“What?” Kataria asked, face screwing up.

“He doesn’t even bother to lie to you.”

“If you don’t know, then you don’t need to know. They didn’t build this. Do not accuse them of it.”

“He defends them.”

“Why?” Lenk suddenly blurted out, aware of both of their stares upon him. “Why are you defending them?”

“He is one of them.”

“How do you know so much about them?” Lenk asked, taking a step toward the dragonman. “What else do you know about them?”

“He will kill you, for them.”

“Why did you even come?”

“You were going to die without me,” Gariath replied.

“And? That’s never swayed you before. But you wanted to come this time, you wanted to see the Shen. You haven’t stopped talking about them, since-” The words came out of his mouth, forced and sharp, as though he were spitting blades. “Since you abandoned us to go chase them.”

One didn’t need to be particularly observant to note the tension rippling between them; that much would have been obvious by the clenching of Gariath’s fists as he took a challenging step forward.

“Consider carefully,” he said, low and threatening, “what you’re accusing me of.”

“Betrayal,” Lenk replied.

“And that forbids someone from coming?” He cast a sidelong scowl to Kataria. “You chose poor company.”

Lenk caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye. Shock was painted across the shict’s face, fear was there, too, each in such great coating as to nearly mask the expression of hurt. Nearly, but not entirely, and not nearly enough to draw attention away from the fact that she did not refute, contradict, or even insult the dragonman.

It hurt, too, when Kataria turned her gaze away from him.

“Not about her,” the voice whispered. “Not yet.”

“This isn’t about her,” Lenk said, turning his attentions back to the dragon man. “This is about you and what you came for. Us. . or the Shen?”

Gariath’s earfrills fanned out threateningly. His gaze narrowed sharply as he leaned forward. Lenk did not back down, did not flinch as the dragonman snorted and sent a wave of hot breath roiling across his face.

“Always,” Gariath said, “it has always been for-”

The mist split apart with the sound of thunder and the gnash of jaws. Teeth came flying out of nothingness, denying man and dragonman a chance to do anything before they came down in a crash. A shock ripped through Lenk, sent him crashing to the earth, and when he found enough sense to look, Gariath was gone.

Not far, though.

Roar clashed against roar, howl ground against howl as the Akaneed pulled its great head back from the pillar and whipped its head about violently, trying to silence the writhing red body in its jaws. Gariath had no intention of doing such, no intention of a silent resignation to teeth and tongue.

And no choice in the matter.

The fight came to a sudden halt and Lenk looked up, helplessly, as Gariath squatted between the jaws. His muscles strained, arms against the roof of the beast’s mouth, feet wedged between its lower teeth, body trembling with the effort as he tried to keep the creature’s cavernous maw from snapping shut.

A moment, and everything went still. Gariath’s body ceased to quake. The Akaneed’s jaws grew solid and strong. The dragonman stared down from between rows of unmoving teeth and said something.

Then they snapped shut and he disappeared.

A single moment spared to cast a low, burbling keen down upon the two piddling creatures upon the pillar. A low groaning sound as it fell on its side, crashed into the ocean with an angry wave. A fading sound of froth hissing into nothingness upon the sea.

And Gariath was gone.

Lenk looked to Kataria. Kataria looked to Lenk. Neither had the expression, the words to fit what they had just seen.

And still, they tried.

“Do we. .” Kataria asked, the words lingering into meaninglessness.

“How?” Lenk asked, the question hanging between them like something hard and iron.

And it continued to hang there, solid as the rock they did not move from, thick as the mist that closed in around them, unfathomable as the sea gently lapping against the stone.