Heights of the Depths (17 page)

“And if your death was my goal, then you would be a large furry rug right now,” the Mandraque taunted him. “I know that with your thick hides, the placement of my blade will provide, at most, a minor pain. I could have targeted your eye if I were of a mind to kill you.”

“Then what do you want?” Demali cried out.

“Shut up, Demali!” said Seramali sharply. “This is not your concern!”

“My father was attacked! How is this not my concern?”

“I shall tell you what I want,” said Thulsa, and he pointed his sword directly at Pavan. “I want him. Your Keeper.”

“Me?” Pavan’s legs trembled and he prayed no one noticed.

“Your crest betrays you.” Thulsa gave him a curious look. “I thought you were older.”

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know me from Akasha. To him, one Serabim looks more or less like another, save for the fur that distinguishes me.
 Pavan drew himself up, willing his legs not to betray him. “I am older than I look,” he said defiantly. “And if you think I am simply going to surrender myself to you, cooperate with—”

“I do not seek either your surrender or your cooperation. You will come with me because it is strategically important that you do. Only by having you in our possession can we attain our true goal.”

“And that would be?”

“Time enough to discuss that after you are in our hands.”

Seramali clenched his teeth and spoke with deliberate effort. “He will never be in your hands. You will never leave this Lodge. You will die where you stand.”

“You could not be more wrong.”

Thulsa raised his free hand over his head and clenched his fist. Pavan couldn’t help but think that it looked very much like a signal of some sort.

Every window in the Lodge shattered.

A barrage of arrows hurtled in, and the heads of the arrows were blazing. They thudded into various parts of the Lodge and, as the harsh winds blasted in through the newly created openings, the fires were immediately fanned into a full blown inferno. Within seconds the entirety of the Lodge was ablaze. It was filled with smoke and screams of Serabim who suddenly found themselves unable to see or even breathe.

Pavan tried to get to Demali, but he couldn’t find her. He could scarcely see his own hands in front of himself. He drew his arm across his mouth and nose, trying to find a way out. He had lived in the Lodge his entire life and would have sworn that he could navigate the place blindfolded. Instead Pavan was now discovering that he was dead wrong. He tried to shout Demali’s name but started coughing violently and quickly closed his mouth. He stumbled, fell, tried to stand and instead fell again. Then something grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him to his feet.

“Thank you!” he started to say, and then he looked up and saw the face of the Mandraque sneering down at him.

Pavan lashed out, but he was never much of a fighter, and Thulsa brushed the desperate blow aside. Then the Mandraque slammed Pavan in the face. Pavan heard something crack, a bone. Immediately his face began to swell and his blood was pouring down over his lower jaw.

Before he could make another move—not that it would have done him much good even if he’d managed it—a canvas bag was yanked over his head and his arms were pulled behind him and lashed at the wrists. But he’d been looking directly at Thulsa when it happened, which meant that someone else had done it. “Let’s go,” said another gravelly Mandraque voice from behind him.

The next thing he knew his feet were lifted clear of the ground and he was being hustled forward. Thulsa was chortling softly in his ear, “Smoke and fire don’t bother us, Keeper. We were born for it. We thrive on it. We are equally dangerous no matter where we are, and that’s why Mandraques will always triumph!”

“Oh? Tell that to the Sirene!” Pavan said defiantly, and was rewarded with a sharp punch to the gut. His feet had been tied together as well, so aside from trying to twist his body away from his captors—a useless proposition—he was effectively helpless. The only thing he could take any consolation in was the fact that he had managed to annoy one of the Mandraques enough to warrant being struck. His only hope was that he might somehow be able to exploit that, although his aching side didn’t seem to readily suggest any way in which he might do so.

Then he was out, out in the cold night air, and the wind howled around him in a way that usually brought him comfort. Now, though, all it did was seem to be howling mournfully for him, as if regretting what was happening to him and asking him why, why had this transpired. He had no answer for that. He had no clue why in the gods’ name the Mandraques would be interested in him. What could they possibly hope to accomplish? What did he have that they could want?

That was when he realized. It was so obvious. Obvious and terrifying, for Akasha had taught him many things about the world, and particularly about the Mandraques and their hopes and dreams and desires for conquest.

For the first time in his life, Pavan truly felt cold.

the vastly waters

I.

It was becoming more and
 more obvious to Jepp that the Travelers were doing their best to keep their distance from her.

That one Traveler who had come down to her cabin and awakened her continued to hover, but he was obviously trying not to get too close to her. This gave her a strange feeling of empowerment that only added to her growing confidence.

She would walk around on the deck of the ship and watch her personal Traveler (as she had come to think of him) drift within range of her. At one point, just to see what would happen, she placed one foot on the bow as if she were preparing to throw herself in, making good on her earlier threats.

The Traveler simply stood there a distance away, making not the slightest effort to stop her.

She lowered her foot back to the deck and said nothing. He said nothing in return.

Jepp endeavored to engage him in conversation. It didn’t work. He would constantly turn away from her, reinforcing to her the notion that for whatever reason, the Travelers were actually afraid of her. She didn’t know why, though, and the fact that she didn’t know was extremely frustrating to her.

She would have loved to talk it over with someone, but unfortunately the only ones around with whom she could converse were the very ones who were frustrating her.

“You feel vulnerable around me, don’t you,” said Jepp. “If Karsen and the others could see this now. The way they trembled at the mere mention of your names, and here I am, talking to you, being openly defiant, and you just hide in your cloaks and make vague threats and yet here I am, still talking. You need me for something, and sooner or later, I’m going to find out what it is. And I have this funny feeling that you’re not sure whether my finding out would be a good thing or a bad thing.” She paused and then approached him. “Does it have something to do with my dreams? Is that it?”

He turned away from her and to her own surprise as much as his, Jepp grabbed at his cloak. “Stop!” she ordered. “I said—”

His gloved hand lashed out and grabbed her around the throat. He lifted her off her feet with no effort at all, and for the first time in days, Jepp truly did know fear once again as it occurred to her that maybe she had pushed the Traveler further than would have been wise.

She had as much as challenged the Traveler to kill her, and now he seemed more than prepared to do so. Her air was closing off, and the world was becoming a hazes of dots floating before her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to whisper, “I’m sorry…”

And then another Traveler was at the first one’s side, putting a hand firmly on his friend’s arm, slowly shaking his head. Again came that same eerie whispering that she had heard before. The Traveler who was holding her aloft was actually trembling with suppressed rage, and suddenly Jepp was falling. She thudded to the deck and slumped over, clutching at her throat, coughing and fighting to get air back into her lungs. She looked up at the Traveler who loomed over her, and then she managed to gasp out, “Okay…I was afraid of you. Is that better? Does that make your world just…just all right somehow?”

He did not respond. She did not expect him to, and then as he turned away, she shouted, “I feel sorry for you!” Slowly she got to her feet and continued, “That’s right. Me. The lowly human. I feel sorry for you, for whatever you are. You’re the most pathetic creature since…since…” Her mind raced for comparison and she found it. “Gant. The most pathetic creature since—”

One moment he was across the deck from her, and the next he was right there, in her face, speaking with a sense of urgency.

“Gant?”

“Yes,” she said uncertainly. “One of the Bottom Feeders. The clan I was with for a time when you…when your brethren…carried me away. Gant.”

“Describe him,” came the whispery voice.

“I don’t—”

“Describe him.”

She jumped back, frightened by the Traveler’s intensity. Her bouts of bravado suddenly seemed very far away and long forgotten. “He’s hard to describe!” she said defensively. “He’s just…he’s sort of this…this blob. He doesn’t really have much of a shape at all.”

“A blob.” His voice was flat. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or was echoing her or mocking her. “A blob, you say.”

“Yes. And I know, there’s no race like that. At least not that I know of. But you would know. Is there a race? Of blobs?”

There was just the smallest shaking of his hood. The other Traveler, the one who had prevented him from snapping Jepp’s neck, had drifted back and now appeared to be watching the two of them. He appeared uncertain as to what to do next. Jepp could sympathize.

“I didn’t think so. He claimed…that is to say, I was told…that he used to be a Phey. But I’ve never seen a Phey, so I don’t know if they look like blobs at all…”

“They…do not,” said the Traveler.

“Karsen told me that he was transformed. That he was romancing first one Phey sister and then another, each without the other knowing. And once they discovered it, they exacted a terrible vengeance upon him, turning him into…into whatever he was.”

“He told you that.”

“Yes.”

“What else?”

It was the closest thing to a conversation Jepp had had since setting foot aboard the ship. It didn’t involve threats nor the concern that the next word could be her last. “Not much else. That Karsen’s clan came upon him and made him one of them. They are Bottom Feeders, after all, and so not especially strict when it comes to matters of race. Well…except where I was involved. That seemed to make a huge difference. But they probably didn’t think of me as a race, anyway. I’m a human, which makes me little more than an animal in their eyes.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Animals have uses,” the Traveler said with an edge to his voice.

She felt a stinging in her cheeks. She would have thought, after all this time and all that she had endured, that it was no longer possible for her to feel embarrassed. She was dismayed to discover that she was wrong. This time when he turned away from her, she made no effort to stop him, but instead shouted after him, “Go to hell!”

“Already there,” the Traveler whispered back at her.

ii.

It was several turns of
 the Damned World later that Jepp saw the storm rolling toward them.

She had witnessed foul weather countless times before, but she had never in her life seen anything quite like this. One minute she was gazing out at the same, unchanging vista that she had grown accustomed to over all this time. She was beginning to wonder if this was what the rest of her life was going to be like. After all, Jepp didn’t know of a certainty that the Travelers had any particular destination in mind. It might have been that their intention was to just sail around with her until she died and then pitch her overboard. It didn’t make any sense, of course. If they wanted her dead, they could have simply killed her when they first took her. 
We’re talking about Travelers. It doesn’t have to make sense.
 That was what she told herself, but even as she did, she didn’t quite believe it. Nobody did things for no reason. Even the insane had reasons for their actions; they were just insane reasons that made sense only to them. Whatever else they were, though, the Travelers were not insane.

Jepp started paying closer attention when the Travelers were talking to each other. She discovered that if she listened closely enough, she could pick up isolated words here and there. One of the words that she was certain she had heard was “Gant,” and that was of great curiosity to her. Why were they so interested in Gant? What was it about a lone Bottom Feeder that would so intrigue the mighty Travelers?

A possible solution suggested herself, but she found it hard to believe. Still, it was a notion worth pursuing. Subtlety was not Jepp’s strong suit. Her belief was that if someone wanted to learn something, there was no better way to go about it than directly. So she had gone straight over to the Traveler that had spoken to her of Gant the other day. When she had first boarded the ship she had not been able to distinguish one Traveler from the other, but by now she had learned to discern who was who simply through observing small tics in their body language.

“Are you a Phey?”

If she was looking for him to give something away in his reaction, she was destined to be disappointed. He didn’t react in the slightest.

“I said,” she began again, “are you a—?”

“I heard you.”

“Well?”

He approached her and she involuntarily took a step back. He seemed to loom over her, occupying the entirety of her world.

“To look upon the Phey is to die,” he said. “If I am of the Phey, and you look upon me, then you will take that knowledge to the next world.” He lifted his hands to either side of his hood. “Are you prepared for that?”

She wanted to stand up to him with as much gusto as she had days ago, but this time she hesitated. She felt as if there was so much more for her to learn, things that were just beyond her comprehension that could be greatly important for everyone and everything. If she died, she would never be able to understand any of it, much less make things better.

And she could make things better. She wasn’t sure quite how yet, but she was beginning to get a sense that she had a role in the grand scheme of things. She wanted to find out what that role was.

But she also wanted to find out if she was right about the Travelers. That was going to be important as well.

She was reminded of an artifact left over from the days when humans actually were in charge of the Damned World. She had seen it when she was much younger, little more than a child, being played with by a young Mandraque who seemed to be having some difficulty with it. He had noticed that Jepp was watching and, rather than hissing at her in anger, had brought it over to the slave pen, placed it just outside, and gestured for her to try her hand at it.

The toy had consisted of small pieces of wood that interlocked and seemed to come together to form a picture of several whores. The young Mandraque was unable to figure out exactly how the pieces interlocked, however. Slowly at first but then with increasing speed and confidence, Jepp assembled the puzzle. She displayed it proudly, at which point an adult Mandraque had come by, seen what she had done, grabbed the puzzle away and smashed it into so many small pieces that an army of Jepps wouldn’t have been able to reassemble it.

She had always remembered that moment, though, and how easily she had been able to see how the pieces fit together.

Jepp felt as if the world had transformed into a vast puzzle. There were pieces out there, pieces that she needed to find. Once she did so, she would see how all of them came together, and she would hold the entire picture in her hands.

My dreams are a piece. The Travelers are a piece. Apparently Gant is a piece, and the Phey might also be as well. I need to get all the pieces in order to see the picture, and I have to say or do the correct thing at any given moment if I’m going to accomplish that.

“No,” she said softly to the Traveler. “I am not prepared for that.”

Slowly the Traveler lowered his hands from his hood. He did not commend her or tell her that she had made a wise decision. Instead he was about to turn away from her.

But then he looked off toward the horizon line and stopped, something having caught his interest. Jepp’s back was to where he was looking, and so she turned to see just what was so interesting.

The storm was rolling right toward them.

It was dead ahead of them and inescapable. The sky directly above them was still blue and pleasant, but ahead of them it was absolutely black, with thick gray clouds and lightning dancing within them. She could see a solid sheet of rain barreling toward them as if some great unseen being were gripping it by either edge and drawing it across the skies. The waves were surging fiercely, and the waters beneath their own craft was starting to buck in response to the oncoming churning.

“Go below,” said the Traveler with a rasp. The second Traveler was already at the sails, preparing them for the violent weather that was bearing down on them. The third was lashing the wheel in order to keep the ship on course. “Now,” he added forcefully when Jepp didn’t move fast enough.

Jepp did as she was bid, fleeing to the lower depths of the ship. By the time she got down there, the ship was already tilting violently. Jepp had never been more glad that she had been eating lightly. She had developed a stronger constitution than when she’d first boarded, but had anything been in her stomach at that moment, it likely would have been decorating the inside of her room before long.

Within minutes the wind was howling outside. She tried to find something to grab onto, and when she couldn’t, contented herself with sitting on the floor, putting her hands to either side. She forced herself to breathe slowly and regularly, determined to remain calm. And as she did so, the storm continued to grow in intensity, howling like a thing alive.

The more she listened to it, the more fascinated she became by it. 
I want to see it,
 she thought, and the thought surprised even her. 
I have never seen a storm like this. Maybe there’s never been a storm like this. And yet here I cower. I should see it, witness it. I should pay obeisance to it. I think…

I think it is coming for me. And it would only be respectful to look it in the eye.

She clambered up the ladder, up onto the deck. The wind immediately hit her with the force of an anvil, knocking her backwards onto the rain-slicked deck. She drew her cloak more tightly around her and fought her way to her feet. The rocking of the boat was even more severe topside. If this had happened during her first days on the ship, she would have been tossed around as helplessly as a pebble skipped across the surface of a pond. As it was, even with the amount of sea craft she had developed over the past weeks of travel, it was still all she could do to resist being thrown about.

She got to her feet, staggered, and then skidded yet again. She hit the deck hard, banging her elbows, and she cried out in pain. Suddenly she was yanked to her feet by a Traveler—her Traveler, as she had come to think of him—who bellowed practically into her face, “What are you doing here!? Go below!”