The Skybound Sea

FOURTEEN

“QAI ZHOTH!”

It began with one cry, an iron voice torn from a throat, somewhere amidst the bustle and bloodshed on the beach. And at one cry, one by one, they looked up.

The shaven-headed metalshapers wiped the sweat from their brows as they looked up from the white-hot iron in their forgepits. The slave drivers held their whips at bay, giving their scaly, reptilian drudges but a moment to lower their loads and bleed quietly as their taskmistresses looked up. The females hauling yet another broken corpse to the sikkhun pits stopped, looked up, smiled broadly.

And one by one, the cry was taken up.

“QAI ZHOTH!”

“AKH ZEKH LAKH!”

“EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! ANNIHILATE!”

They leapt from throat to throat, roaring over one another, accompanied by weapons thrust into the air, purple muscles flexing, howls of bloodlust. Even as the cries died down, the fervor did not. It filled the nostrils of the netherlings, drove their activities to frenzy.

The call had gone up. Bloodshed was close.

Hammers rang out nearly continuously as the shapers strained to finish just one more sword that they may start just one more sword. Whips cracked harder, forcing slaves to run instead of trudge as they hauled more and more loads. Bodies not quite dead-the weak, the starving, the ones that took just too long a break-were added to the corpses flung into the sikkhun pits to stoke the appetites of the beasts and drive their hunger-crazed, warbling laughter to ravenous cacophony.

The netherling war machine was a sight to behold, Yldus thought.

As it had been the first time he saw it. And the second time. After the forty-fifth, he surprised himself by realizing that one could grow tired of the sight of a bunch of females working themselves into a furious frenzy of snarling, spitting, and headbutting.

“Funny,” he muttered to himself.

“Which part?” his companion growled behind him. “The fact that the invasion of Jaga is leaving without me? Or the fact that it’s leaving without me because of you?”

He felt Qaine’s eyes bore into the back of his skull, neither he nor she quite certain what was keeping her from planting something sharper than a scowl there instead.

Still, he couldn’t help but smile as he turned to her. There was an honesty to her that he appreciated. Possibly because Qaine’s particular brand of honesty allowed her to speak openly at least twice as long as any other female before resorting to grunts and bodily functions to make her point.

“Consider it a favor,” Yldus replied. “This invasion is doomed.”

“All the netherlings we have, being sent to an island populated by more of Those Green Things,” she snorted. “There will be blood. There will be death. And I should be responsible for at least most of it.”

“You killed plenty just a few days ago.”

“And?”

“And we lost no one. Jaga is different. We’ve lost more than fifty warriors trying just to find the damn place.” He cast a glower toward the cavern at the rear of the beach that served as their base. “And Sheraptus wants to send out three hundred, nearly all our sikkhuns, and all three males to try and find it again. I’d be insane to recommend taking one of the few Carnassials we have left when we’re liable to lose at least half of them.”

“That’s not why you want me to stay.”

He looked her over. She stood two paces away and a full head taller. Powerful arms were folded across a more powerful chest, a frowned scarred upon her long face, white hair cropped cruelly short refusing to flutter in the wind. He smiled gently at her. She snorted, spat, scowled.

An adequate summary of their relationship.

“Xhai is going,” he said. “Xhai is violently unstable.”

“And I’m not?” she sounded offended.

“You can grasp the concept of self-control. She can grasp the concept of killing anyone whom Sheraptus so much as looks at. Maybe Those Green Things wouldn’t hurt you, but Xhai would, and she will if you go.”

Qaine clearly wanted to protest, if the flare of her nostrils and narrow of her eyes were any indication. It was a sign of weakness for a female to admit being incapable of destroying anything short of a mountain, and even then, it would have to be a big one.

But Semnein Xhai was notably more insane than a mountain and had only been getting worse since she had returned from her brief captivity at the humans’ hands. And neither Yldus nor Qaine thought she would be any more reasonable after whatever ruckus had just happened in the cavern a few moments ago; Sheraptus had forbade anyone from entering to find out.

“Fine,” she grunted.

“It’ll be a disaster, regardless,” Yldus replied, staring down at the bustle on the beach and Vashnear standing at the center of it.

His erstwhile brother stood between the ships bobbing at sea, the red jewel about his neck glowing brighter and bloodier than the crimson robes he wore. His nethra sent him hovering a foot off the ground, only barely meeting the gazes of the females he presumed to command with sweeping gestures as he directed them and the cargo their scaly slaves carried aboard the boats.

“After all, Vashnear is involved.”

“Him?” Qaine scoffed. “He trembles at puddles of piss. Will he at least grow a spine for the invasion?”

Yldus frowned as a slave broke under a particularly fearsome crack of the whip. With a throaty scream, it collapsed, a globule of blood flying from its lacerated back to splatter upon the ground.

It was bad enough that Vashnear hurled himself a good ten feet away from the bodily excretion, even without the cringing shriek that accompanied it.

“Unlikely.” Yldus sighed, rubbing his eyes. “A male terrified of contracting a disease from the overscum is just one problem. Consider that our forces are diminished and that Sheraptus refuses to wait for more from the portal, the fact that an unstable lunatic will be leading them and. .”

“And a male so spineless that he denies the force a much-needed Carnassial just to keep her from getting hurt?”

“Just so. Anything could be turned against us, especially Sheraptus. It was bad enough when he bedded the overscum females, but now he’s talking to them. . when he isn’t talking to crabs. And he’s supposed to be leading us.”

“That’s why you’re not staying here,” Qaine replied, as soft as a seven-foot-tall female could. “His is the right to lead. Yours is to plan.”

“Indeed. My staggering intellect continues to burden as well as amaze.” He sighed. “We have the First, if nothing else. They can carry the rest.”

“Already, you’re sounding more stupid than weak,” she said, chuckling. “Glad we had this talk.”

“Keep talking like that and I won’t bring you back anything from Jaga.”

She grunted, pulling out a small gray fragment of stone attached to a thin black chain from beneath her breastplate.

“You already gave me this, which you were stupid to do.” She snorted, thrusting it at him. “Everything you could have taken from Port Yonder and you chose a pebble.”

“And I gave it to you.”

“Why?”

He rolled his shoulders. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever owned. Everything else belongs to Sheraptus. It’s mine to give away.”

“For stupid reasons.”

“Then give it back.”

She pulled it away defensively, glowering at him. He half-sneered, half-smiled.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Shut up,” she grunted, stalking down the dune. “I’ve got to go ready my sikkhun. If I’m going to stay behind with the high-fingered weaklings, I’ll at least ride taller than them.”

They descended the sandy slope, picking their way through the rocky outcroppings jutting from the dunes. Amidst them all, Yldus paused, drawing Qaine’s attention as he slowly surveyed the pillars.

“What?” she asked.

“It just occurred to me,” he said, beginning to walk again, “do you ever feel like it’s a little stupid to talk about our strategies and weaknesses so openly like this?”

“I think talking is stupid.”

Denaos peered around the stone outcropping. Risky, he knew; it was hard to hear anything over the sudden ferverous roar that rose up from the beach below, let alone the footsteps of two netherlings. But he caught only a glimpse of their purple backs as they disappeared into the activity below.

He turned, glanced to his companion expectantly.

“Did you get any of that?” he asked.

“No,” Dreadaeleon replied. “How would I? I don’t speak netherling.”

The rogue took a cautious step out into the open. “It might have been something important.”

“When have they ever said anything important?” Dreadaeleon asked, taking a less than cautious stumble after him. “I feel I should remind you that we’re not here to pick up the finer points of their conversation, either.”

“You don’t have to remind me,” Denaos muttered, stalking up the dune to a higher vantage point. “In fact, if you wanted to stop talking altogether, I wouldn’t object.”

“I’m just saying, since it’s your fault and all.”

“My fault?”

The boy rolled his shoulders helplessly, unable to deny simple fact. “You took the longface prisoner rather than just killing her, she took Asper prisoner, which brought us here.”

“I thought she’d have valuable information about the tome.”

“I refer you to my earlier point about netherlings and the relative value of their conversation. From what I was able to discern, the primary thrust of your interrogation was whether or not she could answer any question with a bodily function.”

“Yeah? Well, now we know she can.” The rogue snorted. “Regardless of whose fault it is, here we are.”

He knelt down low upon the dune’s ridge, keeping most of his body hidden behind the sand. For all of ten breaths, anyway. It quickly became insultingly clear that not a single longface was going to bother looking up.

Not that they were particularly renowned for their curiosity, but the frenzy with which they worked, their focus hammered like rivets onto the metals they forged and the slaves they whipped, was unnerving.

Not that they weren’t before.

And yet, it didn’t become completely clear until he noticed them gathering. In knots of purple flesh and polished iron armor, they clustered upon the beach. Thirty-three to a group each time, sharpening thirty-three swords, stringing thirty-three bows, coating thirty-three wedges of steel with thirty-three vials of sickly green poison.

And they continued to gather across the beach, sands stained with blood, blackened by fire.

In thirty-three groups.

“Silf’s Sweet Daughters,” he muttered. “They’re mobilizing.”

“For what?” Dreadaeleon asked, creeping up beside him. “They need that many to go destroy Teji?”

“To destroy Teji, they’d need a strong bowel movement and a stiff breeze. They wouldn’t bring this many.”

“Then. . what? Are they attacking the mainland?”

Denaos shook his head. “I don’t see any food in whatever they’re loading aboard the ships.”

“Do they. . need food?”

“Of course they need food.” Denaos paused, furrowing his brow. He looked over his shoulder at the boy. “Right? They have mouths.”

“Those are used for screaming. I’ve never seen them eat.”

“Me neither. Huh.” He looked back over the dune, shrugging. “Okay, if we return to the mainland and it’s been completely decimated, we’ll consider the matter settled. For now, I’d say they’re about to attack a much closer target.”

“Jaga,” Dreadaeleon muttered. “Lenk, Kataria, Gariath. .”

“Let’s focus on one companion in peril at a time here.”

Denaos swept his gaze over the beachhead, the words slipping out through his frown. He settled on the massive spike-ringed pit in the middle, on the two netherlings hauling a twitching Gonwa to the edge and tossing it in. The spikes shook, the gruesome laughter echoing off the metal as something within stirred.

“If she’s not already-”

“She isn’t.”

The boy’s face was steeled with determination, he knew without even looking. His lips would be turned downward in a perfectly curved frown, his eyes would be acting under the impression that the more squinted they were, the more intense he looked, and he would be trying desperately to convince himself and the world that he had a jaw.

Exactly the sort of look he probably thought he should have had in this kind of situation.

If you were an honest man, Denaos told himself, you’d tell him. You’d tell him you weren’t about to suggest that she was dead. You’d tell him that you know what Sheraptus did to her, what he’s probably doing to her now. You’d tell him he should look far, far worse than whatever it is he thinks he’s supposed to look like.

But Denaos was not an honest man. Not to his companions, not to his gods, and never, ever to himself.

“Yeah,” he said, “you’re probably right.”

Trying to ignore the feeling of self-loathing that came with saying that, he returned to surveying the beachhead. The two males stood out amidst the crowd with the bright crimson glow of the gemstones around their necks as they floated about, dictating to the clusters of females, sending them rushing eagerly toward the black ships moored in the surf, trampling the Gonwa slaves who continued to haul loads.

He wondered if, at some point, she might be among those loads, bound and bundled into the ship to be taken to whatever invasion they were planning. What then? Swoop in, die horribly, be dragged to the pits along with the other Gonwa bodies to be-

Let’s stop that train of thought right there, shall we? If you keep thinking of the pits filled with corpses and how she might be in there and how you’ll probably wind up in there and how whatever’s in there now is laughing and crunching and laughing and laughing and. .

A cry went up from the crowd. A team of six netherlings came charging forward, a crudely-fastened ramp held between them. Denaos watched, unable to turn away, as they lowered it into the pit.

He dearly wished he could, though, long before the ramp began to tremble with the weight of something heavy climbing up it.

With a sudden howl, the creature tore itself free from the pit, scattering sand and netherlings alike as it tore the land apart to make room for its size. On thick claws, it paced in hurried circles, a great, square head sweeping back and forth across the beachhead. Muscles flexed beneath a pelt of rust-red fur, a bushy tail swishing as it loped around, netherlings scrambling to get out of its way.

It was searching for something, that much was clear to Denaos. Why it was having trouble finding it became clear the moment it turned its head toward his hiding place.

In the place of eyes were two indentations in the skull covered with thick, black fur. It couldn’t have seen him, Denaos told himself over thoughts that largely consisted of “oh gods” over and over. It couldn’t have seen him. It was blind.

That didn’t make it any less unnerving when the thing’s black, rubbery lips peeled back to reveal long, glistening rows of teeth in what was very clearly a smile in a very deliberate attempt to make him take off running, propelled by a jet of his own cowardice.

That option grew increasingly more appealing as six ears, three to each side of its head, split apart in a pair of pointed, wedge-shaped fans. The beast whirled about, canting its head to the side as its ears twitched, trembled, found something.

With a sound that was like a very sick hound laughing at a very sick joke, the thing took off at a gallop. It sent a pair of netherlings leaping out of the way before its tremendous shoulders bunched and uncoiled, sending it leaping through the air to land upon a nearby Gonwa slave that it dragged, screaming, from the line.

The feeding was gruesomely brief: a noisome tumult of flesh ripping, meat slurping, bones cracking between tremendous jaws. All punctuated with peals of gibbering laughter.

Denaos watched the grisly scene for as long as it took him to blink. He then rose up, turned around, walked away from the dune’s ridge, and looked to Dreadaeleon, who raised a brow at him expectantly.

“So,” the rogue said, “how set are you on saving Asper?”

“Why?”

“Hongwe’s just down at the beach with the boat, you know. We could be back at Teji by nightfall and have a few more hours to reflect on how lucky we are not to have our genitals eaten by giant, six-eared, eyeless horrors.”

“What happened?” Dreadaeleon asked. “What’s down there?”

“Well, damn. There are only so many ways I can say it, Dread.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Go take a look for yourself. They’re fairly preoccupied down there.” He cringed as a peal of wailing laughter rose up over the ridge.

“That might prove an opportune moment,” Dreadaeleon said, tapping his chin. “Barring distractions, I could probably do a fair job of scrying out Asper’s location.”

Denaos furrowed his brow, looking a tad offended. “You could do that the entire time? You could have just used some manner of magical weirdness to find her and spared me the sight of whatever it is I just saw?”

“The act of seeing where one is not meant to see is a bit more than magical weirdness,” Dreadaeleon replied sharply. “It requires a clear vantage, a delicate position and-”

“And what? The seed of a blasphemer? Because I’ll get to work on that and be done in six breaths if that’ll make this go any faster.” He whirled about, gesturing wildly over the ridge. “Hell, why are we even here? Why don’t you go down spitting out lightning and flying around like an underweight sparrow made of death like you did on Teji?”

“Because-”

“Even better, why don’t you just drop your trousers right now and work up a good, flaming piss that sets them all ablaze like you did a few days ago? Why are we here, skulking about like rodents?”

“I would have hoped that, in our time together, you’d grasp that magic isn’t so mystical that it can be just summoned up like that. There isn’t an opportune moment to-”

“There is never not an opportune moment to shoot fire out of your prick!” Denaos snapped sharply. “What is it, then? Back on the beach, you were nearly unstoppable. Days ago, you were pissing fire.” He stared intently at the wizard. “What’s going on with you?”

“It’s complicated,” Dreadaeleon sighed, rubbing his eyes. “And I don’t have time to-”

It wasn’t clear what he was trying to say when the boy’s body suddenly jerked, nor when his eyes bulged out, threatening to roll out of their sockets. Nothing was clearer when he snapped at the waist, leaning heavily on his knees as he loosed a torrent of vomit upon the ground to coalesce into a brackish green pool. Things were certainly disgusting, Denaos thought, and disgusting for a solid ten breaths, but whatever was happening to him didn’t become any more obvious.

That didn’t happen until the vomit drew itself together of its own volition, shuddered as if it were taking a deep breath and then, with a slow, leisurely confidence, began to slither off on a carpet of bile.

Denaos turned a slack jaw to Dreadaeleon, who merely wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sneered.

“I’m dying, Denaos.”

“I see. .” the rogue replied, his tone suggesting no real willingness to continue with this conversation, yet compelled all the same. “Of. . what?”

“The Decay,” Dreadaeleon replied. “The barriers that separate the magic from my body are collapsing. I’ll slowly lose more control over both and, eventually, my skin will catch fire, my lungs will freeze inside my chest, and my nerves will splinter and erupt out of my skin.”

“Which will be on fire.”

“On fire, yes.”

“Well. . that’s. .”

The wizard affixed him with a glare. “That’s what?”

“I guess I just thought it would have a more impressive name?”

“What?”

“Something like ‘the dragonblood,’ or ‘the frothening,’ or ‘that which explodes without mercy.’”

Dreadaeleon narrowed his eyes sharply. “I am going to explode. My frozen innards will fly out of my body and burst into pink and black snow and children will make snowmen with my kidneys.”

“I know, I know! I’m sorry! I just-”

“You just what? You’re just concerned about me being out here? Thinking I can’t handle it? Thinking that I’m totally powerless because my own body is rebelling against me and soon I’m going to be chopped up for spare parts and turned into a book because I’m far more useful in death than I was in life?”

“Those weren’t going to be my exact words, but. .”

There was more to that retort, he thought, and it was going to be clever. But he said nothing more the moment he noticed the tears welling up in Dreadaeleon’s eyes, the moment he remembered the wizard was just a boy.

A scared, dying boy whose remaining fluids that had not just come out of his mouth were now dripping from his eyes in thin streams.

And he wanted something from Denaos, that much was obvious. A nod maybe, possibly a big hug and a weeping reassurance that everything was going to be fine and that they were going to rescue Asper themselves and Dreadaeleon was going to be proven a proud and powerful wizard over whom she would swoon after she told Denaos that everything he had ever done would be forgiven and he would go to heaven and he’d stop seeing the woman with the slit throat every time he stopped drinking.

But he couldn’t tell Dreadaeleon that.

Lying was a sin. An awfully convenient sin, given the circumstance, but Denaos couldn’t afford any more.

And what the wizard got was something different.

“I’ll go gather your vomit,” Denaos said with the kind of hesitation that suggested he had hoped he’d never have to say that.

What was that? Dreadaeleon asked himself as he watched the rogue stalk away. What was that look? What was that? Pity? He pities me? A lowlife, scum-sucking, barkneck like him pities me? He sneered, felt a salty tear drip into his mouth. Probably because you’re crying like a. . like a woman or something. No, not a woman. She wouldn’t want you to say that. It’s demeaning. Stop that. Stop all of it.

He couldn’t.

Weak. You disgust me. You’ll disgust her. And when they hack you up, your pieces will disgust everyone else. You’ll be the only wizard useless in life and in death. Look at you, unable to do anything but sit here and weep. How are you supposed to be the hero? How are they supposed to respect you? How are you supposed to save her?

“You are not, lorekeeper.”

As odd as it felt to say, he knew Greenhair was standing behind him even before she spoke in her lilting tone. There was always something that preceded her arrivals: a feeling at the back of his head like cricket legs rubbing together, a sudden calm that washed over him, and the fact that she only ever seemed to show up when he felt a particular kinship with things that came out of livestock rectums.

As such, he didn’t turn around to look at her. He didn’t even speak to her, didn’t acknowledge her existence at all.

“You have exactly until I blink to leave before I roast you alive,” he muttered.

Or tried to, anyway.

“I do not wish you any distress,” she said, her voice a river flowing into his ears to pool beneath his brain. “But I do not think you are in any condition to be making threats.”

He half-smiled, half-sneered as he turned to face the siren. His attentions were instantly drawn to her head, framed by feathery gills wafting from her neck, a fin rising from a crop of hair the color of the sea, a pair of blank, liquid eyes staring intently at him. All the color and oddity framed a face that was expressionless. A serene, monochrome portrait: perfectly and terrifyingly empty.

“I’m always willing to make the effort,” he said, “especially when it comes to deranged sea tramps that have attempted to sell me to the very purple-skinned longfaces I’m surrounded by right now.”

Her mouth trembled into a frown. “I have never claimed to be incapable of regret, lorekeeper, nor mistake or misplaced ambition.”

“And which one do I owe this visit to?” He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of a distant warcry. “Because if you’re looking for another regret, just raise your voice a little.”

“I have no desire to draw the attentions of the longfaces,” she replied, averting her gaze guiltily. “I have. . reconsidered my alliance with them.”

“Understandable, what with their constant desire to kill things.”

“It was their unique talents that drove me to seek them out,” Greenhair said, a tone of accusation creeping into her voice. “The tome is too much to trust to mortals, the chance that the demons might seize it too great. I could not take that risk, for the sake of my waters and beyond.”

“QAI ZHOTH!” a longface’s roar rose over the ridge.

“If you want to ask them something, I’d do it now,” Dreadaeleon replied, lowering his voice. “Before things get weird.”

“I was. . mistaken. My faith in them was driven by their talent for slaughtering the demons. I did not suspect that their prowess might come from serving someone far darker.”

“Darker?” Dreadaeleon asked, sarcasm replaced by curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“I. . was at Irontide when the morning rose, seeking Sheraptus. I had hoped to reason with him, to convince him to direct his attentions toward Jaga. I overheard dealings between him and. . something. Something old.”

“The bad kind of old, I take it.”

“He spoke the first words to the Aeons. He was the one that spoke on their behalf, taking their words from the servants of the Gods just as they took their masters’ words. Azhu-Mahl, he was called in the darkest days. He, who was closer to heaven than any mortal, is alive and allied with the longfaces.”

“They do tend to attract some odd friends, don’t they?”

“LISTEN TO ME.” The porcelain of her face cracked, the liquid of her voice boiled in a bare-toothed snarl. “I can make no apology that would sate you, only tell you that I was wrong, in all things, and whatever sins I have wrought against you are nothing compared to that which is about to happen. Their allies, the old gray one, he is providing them with things that should not be.”

“The stones,” Dreadaeleon whispered, the realization dawning upon him instantly. “The red stones they carry. They negate the laws of magic. .”

“And their venoms that eat through demon flesh,” Greenhair said. “They have more, worse, all of which can do much, much worse and all of which require the longfaces destroying Ulbecetonth.”

“How? Why?”

“I do not know yet.”

“Handy.”

“I know only that, to stop them and the demons both, someone is required. Someone brave, someone powerful.”

“We have neither of those,” Dreadaeleon said. “My greatest feat is vomit that walks, the bravest among us is off chasing it, and both of us are a little preoccupied with something right now.” He turned away, looking back to the ridgeline. “Now, if you’ll just. .”

Before he felt the chill of her fingers, her hands were upon his shoulders, resting comfortably as though they had always been there. And by the time he was aware of them, he couldn’t help but feel that they belonged there. They didn’t, of course; she was a siren, treacherous by nature, treacherous by practice. This was a trick, obviously.

A trick that felt cool upon his skin, coaxing out the fever that had engulfed his body for the past days. A trick that came out of her lips on a lilting, lingering song, flooding into his head to douse a mind ablaze with fear, with doubt.

“I will not, lorekeeper,” she spoke, words sliding into song, song sliding into thought. His thoughts. “I cannot, for I cannot do this without you.”

He felt it again, the itch at the back of his skull.

She’s in your head, old man. Careful. You know what she does in there. Get her out.

He should have. He would have, if her presence there didn’t seem so right, so natural. Expelling her seemed like throwing out a perfectly good bottle of wine, something so sweet and fragrant that it would be a crime to do anything but drink it in, savor it.

He didn’t even like wine.

“No one else can do this. Not your companions, not the longfaces,” she whispered to his ears, to his mind. “I need your strength, your intellect, your power. I need you.”

“I. . I can’t,” he said. “I’m sick. I’m dying. I have no power.”

“You are distracted. You are distraught. Trifling things.”

“Ah. . trifling.”

“They mean nothing to you. I can ease your thoughts, give you clarity.” Her fingers rose to his temples, fingers gently swirling the waters she poured into his mind. “I can give you the power to save me.”

“And. . what about Asper?”

“Leave her,” she cooed, like it was just a simple thing to do so.

“She needs me.”

“The world needs you. They will speak of you with tears in their eyes. They will respect you. Thousands of lives against one, all their respect against hers.”

“All of them. .” He closed his eyes, tried to imagine it. She made it easy. “They would fear me.”

“They would love you.”

“If I just. .”

“Come with me.” Her breath was a heady scent, filling his nostrils even as her voice filled his ears, all of her entering all of him. “To Jaga. Let me give you power. Let me give you the world.”

“And she. . she would. .”

“She will die.” It was spoken with all that fragrance, all that sweet water, all that made the siren’s voice intoxicating. “She will die. She does not need you. She means nothing. But you are-”

It happened without words. It happened with barely any movement. And he wasted no thought on how he found himself with his eyes ablaze with energy, how a lock of her sea-green hair lay severed from her shocked, wide-eyed face, how his fingers still smoked and the air still crackled with the bolt of lightning he had just narrowly missed her with.

It happened. And he lowered two fingers at her, tiny blue serpents dancing across his fingertips.

“Leave,” he whispered.

“Lorekeeper, I-”

“LEAVE.”

Her expression continued to crack, the serenity of her face shattered into fragments of anger, revulsion, and fear. She backed away from him slowly, as she might an animal, down the dune and toward the shore. Her eyes never left his, even as his fingers left her body, the electricity crackling eagerly upon his tips.

“You will never save her,” Greenhair snarled. “Even if you release her from the longfaces, you can’t help her. This world will be consumed, lorekeeper, in sea or in flame. You will die. She will die. And when she does. .” The siren’s lip twisted up, her sneer an ugly crack all its own. “It will be your name she curses for not doing what must be done.”

He had no retort for that. He had barely any wit with which to hear her. His skull was ablaze again, her liquid words boiling inside his head and hissing out on meaningless sighs of steam. He didn’t lower his fingers, didn’t release the anger coursing through him until she disappeared behind a rocky outcropping.

And when he did, the power did not so much leave him as rip itself free from him, taking will and strength with it. A poignant reminder that, despite the occasional outburst, he was still dying. A reminder lost on him as he gasped, arms falling to his sides and knees buckling as he tried to stay on his feet.

He heard footsteps behind him. Denaos, maybe. Or anyone who wasn’t blind, deaf, or stupid enough not to notice the bolt of lightning that had just gone howling into the sky a moment ago. It didn’t matter. Anyone who wanted him dead wouldn’t have had to try very hard to make it happen.

“I take it I missed something fun, then,” Denaos said as the footsteps came to a halt behind him.

“Greenhair,” Dreadaeleon said, breathing heavily.

“The siren, huh?” The rogue didn’t sound surprised. “Where is she now?”

“Chased her off.” The boy staggered to his feet, turned to face the rogue. “Have to leave. Someone was bound to have seen that lightning. Someone had to have sensed it.”

“They probably would, if there was anyone left to do it.”

“What?”

Denaos jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “It was faster than we expected. The ships have almost all left. Aside from a few left behind to stand guard, there are no more longfaces on the island.”

“Jaga,” Dreadaeleon said. “She wasn’t lying.”

“Huh?”

“They’ve left for Jaga. Going to destroy Ulbecetonth.”

“That’s. . good, right?”

“When has their wanting to destroy something ever worked out well for us?”

“Point.”

“Greenhair said,” the boy paused, his body wracked with a sudden cough, “that they served someone darker, someone older. Even if they didn’t. .” His words devolved into a hacking fit.

“Lenk and the others are on the island,” Denaos finished.

They stared at each other, the realization dawning upon them both, the choice shortly thereafter. Stay here, save Asper and possibly die? Go to Jaga, warn the others and possibly die? Of course, one of them could stay and save her while the other went to warn them and then they’d both certainly die.

But they saw in each other a reflection into themselves. Something in the way Denaos stared, eyes firm and searching for no way out of this. Something in the way Dreadaeleon stood, pulling himself up on trembling legs and refusing to acknowledge the pain it caused him with so much as a wince.

And in that, they both knew that they would stay. They would save her, maybe die trying. She was worth it.

To both of them, each one realized with a sudden tension, a clench of fist and a narrow of eye, toward the other. A tension they had no choice but to bite back at the moment.

“There’s still longfaces down there,” Denaos said. “We circle around, slide down the dune, and make our way to the cavern at the back. If she’s not dead, she’ll be in there.”

“She’s not dead,” Dreadaeleon said.

“I know,” Denaos replied.

“Then why’d you say it?”

No answer.

Lying was a sin, after all.