The Skybound Sea (2 page)

But are they good? If I asked her, maybe she’d tell me. Maybe we could still do this
.

Sometimes, I think about it
.

Then the voice starts screaming
.

The Shen took the tome and fled to their island home of Jaga. We follow them there. The demons will, too, and the netherlings. I’ll kill them all
.

This is what we were meant to do
.

This is why we live
.

We kill
.

They die
.

Our choice
.

Our plan is to go to Jaga. Our plan is to find the tome, to keep it out of the hands of the Shen and everyone else. The island is far away. The way is treacherous. That doesn’t matter
.

The traitors are coming with me
.

I’m going to bury them there
.

H
e awoke from the nightmares and said it.

“Hanth.”

He rose, slipped a dirty and threadbare robe over his body and wore nothing else. He stared at his hands, mortal soft and human frail.

“Hanth.”

He left a small hovel, one of many. He walked with a person, one of many, down to the harbor. Carried over their heads, passed along by his hands, he watched a corpse slide from their grasp, into the bay, and disappear under the depths. A short prayer. A short funeral.

One of many.

“Hanth.”

His name was Hanth.

He knew this after only three repetitions.

Three days ago, it took twenty times for him to remember that he was Hanth. Two days ago, it took eleven times to remember that he was not the Mouth. And today, after three repetitions, he remembered everything.

He remembered his father now, sailor and drunk. He remembered his mother, gone when he learned to walk. He remembered the promise he made to the child and wife he didn’t know, that Hanth would be there.

He met his wife and child. He kept his promise. Those memories were the ones that hurt, filled him with pain exquisite, like needles driven into flesh thought numb. Exciting. Excruciating.

And they never ended there. The needle slid deeper. He remembered the days when he lost them both. He remembered the day he begged deaf gods and their greedy servants to save his child. He remembered cursing them, cursing the name that could do nothing for them.

He threw away that name.

He heard Ulbecetonth speak to him in the darkness.

He became the Mouth.

“Hanth.”

That was his name now. The memories would not go. He didn’t want them to go. Mother Deep meant nothing.

So, too, did her commands. So, too, did the fealty he once swore to her.

He remembered that, too. The sound of a beating heart would not let him forget.

In the distance, so far away as to have come from another life, he could hear it. Its beat was singular and steady; a foot tapping impatiently. He turned and looked to the lonely temple at the edge of Port Yonder, the decrepit church standing upon a sandy cliff. The people left it there for the goddess they honored.

The people knew nothing. They did not know what the wars had left imprisoned in that temple.

And as long as he lived, they never would.

He had once agreed to make them know. He had agreed to bring Daga-Mer back. The Mouth had agreed to that.

He was Hanth.

Daga-Mer would wait forever.

He turned his back on the Father now, as he had turned his back on his former life, and turned his attentions to the harbor.

Another body. Another splash.

One of many since the longfaces attacked.

What they had come for, no one knew. Even though the Mouth had once been their enemy, Hanth knew nothing of their motives, why they had come to Yonder, why they had slaughtered countless people, why they burned the city, why they had attacked the temple and done nothing more than shattered a statue and left.

He knew only that they
had
done these things. The bodies, indiscriminately butchered, lay as evidence amongst half the city that was now reduced to ashen skeletons.

His concerns were no longer for them, but for the dead and for the people who carried them, bodies in one hand and sacrifices in the other as they moved in slow lines to the harbor.

One procession bowed their heads for a moment, then turned away and left. Another came to take their place at the edge of the docks. Another would follow them. By nightfall, the first procession would be back.

“Not going to join in?”

He turned, saw the girl with the bushy black hair and the broad grin against her dusky skin that had not diminished in the slightest, even if her hands were darkened with dried blood and she reeked of death and ashes.

“Kasla.”

He never had to repeat her name.

She glanced past his shoulder to the funerary processions. “Is it that
you’re choosing to stand away from them or did they choose for you?” Upon his perplexed look, she sighed. “They don’t speak well of you, Hanth. After all you’ve done for us, after you helped distribute food and organize the arrangements, they still don’t trust you.”

He said nothing. He didn’t blame them. He didn’t care.

“Might be because of your skin,” she said, holding her arm out and comparing it to his. “No one’s going to believe you once lived here when you look like a pimple on someone’s tanned ass.”

“It’s not that,” he replied.

She sighed. “No, it’s not. You don’t pray with them, Hanth. They want to appreciate you. They want to see you as someone sent from Zamanthras, to guide them.”

He stared at her, unmoved.

“And that’s kind of hard to do when you spit on Her name,” Kasla sighed. “Couldn’t you just humor them?”

“I could,” he said.

“Then why don’t you?”

He regarded her with more coldness than he intended and spoke.

“Because they would hold their child’s lifeless body in their hands and beg for Zamanthras to bring her back,” he said, “and when no one would deign to step from heaven to do anything, they would know me a liar. People can hate me if they want. I will do what the Gods can’t and help them anyway.”

It was harder to turn away from her than it was to turn away from anything, from everything else. It was harder to hear the pain in her voice than it was to hear the heartbeat of a demon.

“Then how,” she asked softly, “will you ever call this city home?”

He closed his eyes, sighed. She was angry. She was disappointed in him. He used to know how to handle this.

He looked, instead, to the distant warehouse, the largest building seated not far away from the temple. It, too, was a prison, though of a more common nature. It held a captive of flesh and blood behind a heavy door. Its prisoner’s heart beat with a sound that could not reach Hanth’s ears.

“Rashodd,” he said the name. “He did not try to escape?”

“He didn’t, no. Algi watches his cell now.” He could sense the question before she asked it. “How did you know his name?”

“He’s a Cragsman,” Hanth replied, evading it less than skillfully. “A shallow intellect and all the savagery and cunning of a bear. If we’ve two more men to spare, then put them both on watch with Algi.”

“That’s difficult,” she said. “Everyone not busy with the dead are busy with the dying. We’ve still got the sick to think about.”

Hanth had been avoiding the problem and the ill alike, never once coming close to the run-down building that had been used to house them. He could handle the dead. He could quell unrest. He could not handle illness.

Not without remembering his daughter.

And yet, it was a problem to handle, one whose origins were not even agreed upon. Plague and bad fish were blamed at first, but the disease lingered. More began to speak of poison, delivered from the hands of shicts ever dedicated to ending humanity. Whispers, rumors; both likely wrong, but requiring attention.

One more problem that he would have to face, along with the dead, along with dwindling resources, along with the prisoner Rashodd, along with Daga-Mer, along with the fact that he had once entered this city with the intent of ending it. He would tell them and they would hate him, someday.

Kasla …

He would never tell her.

She would never hate him.

He cast his gaze skyward. Clouds roiled, darkened. Thunder rumbled, echoed. A lone seagull circled overhead, soundless against the churning skies.

“Rain?” Kasla asked.

“
Water
,” he replied.
One problem alleviated, at least
.

Yet the promise of more water did not cause him the relief it should have, not so long as his eyes remained fixed upon the seagull.

“That’s odd,” she said, following his gaze. “It’s flying in such tight circles. I’ve never seen a gull move so …”

Unnaturally
, he thought, dread rising in his craw.
Gulls don’t
.

His fears mounted with every moment, every silent flutter of feathers, even before he could behold the thing fully. He swallowed hard as it came down, flapping its wings as it plopped upon two yellow feet and ruffled its feathers, turning two vast eyes upon him.

He heard Kasla gasp as she stared into its face. He had no breath left for such a thing.

“What in the name of …” Words and Gods failed her. “What
is
it?”

He did not tell her. He had hoped to never tell her.

But the Omen stared back at him.

From feet to neck, it was a squat gull. Past that, it was a nightmare: a withered face, sagging flesh, and hooked nose disguising female features that barely qualified as such. Its teeth, little yellow needles, chattered as it stared at them both with tremendous white orbs, a gaze too vast to be capable of focusing on anything.

It was not the monstrosity’s gaze that caused his blood to freeze, not when it tilted its head back, opened its mouth, and spoke.

“He’s loose
,” a man’s voice, barely a notch above a boy’s, and terrified, echoed in its jaws.
“Sweet Mother, he’s loose! Get back! Get back in your cell! Someone! ANYONE! HELP!”

“That’s … that’s Algi’s voice,” Kasla gasped, eyes wide and trembling. “How is … what’s going—”

“Zamanthras help me, Zamanthras help me
,” Algi’s voice echoed through the Omen’s mouth.
“Please don’t … no, you don’t have to do this. Please! Don’t! PLEASE!”

“Hanth … what …” Kasla’s voice brimmed with confusion and sorrow as her eyes brimmed with tears.

“In oblivion, salvation,” a dozen voices answered her. “In obedience, salvation. In acceptance, salvation. In defiance …”

He looked up. Seated across the roof of a building like a choir, a dozen sets of vast eyes stared back, a dozen jaws of yellow needles chattered in unison and, as one dreadful voice, spoke.

“Damnation.”

“What are they, Hanth?” Kasla was crying. “What
are they
?”

“Hide,” he told her, taking steps backward. “Run. Get everyone as far away from here as you can.”

“There are boats, we could—”

“Stay on dry land! Stay out of the water! Tell them to leave the dead and the sick.”

“What? We can’t just leave them here to—”

No finish to the plea. No beginning to an answer. He was running.

People cast scowls at his back, shouted at him as he rudely shoved through their processions, cursed his blasphemies. That was easy to ignore. Kasla called after him, begged him to come back. That was not.

They could despise him. He would still save them. He would try.

Thunder clashed overhead, an echoing boom that shook his bones. He glanced up. The clouds swirled swiftly as if stirred in a cauldron. At their center, a dark eye of darker calm formed.

Directly over the temple. It followed the heartbeat.

“He wears the storm as a crown.”

He charged through the city streets, toward the warehouse turned into a prison. He would have prayed that its charge was still there. He would have prayed that the Omen was nothing more than a sick joke from a spiteful beast. He would have, if he thought any god still had ears for him.

He rounded a corner and the warehouse loomed before him. Its doors had
been shattered. Algi, young and scrawny, stood against the doorframe, his legs dangling beneath him as his own spear pinned him to the wood through his chest. Algi’s eyes, wide and white, were staring at Hanth with the same fear Hanth knew would be reflected a hundred times over if he didn’t act fast.

A thick drop of rain fell upon his brow. It trickled down, sickly and hot, sticky and odorous to dangle in front of his eye. Red.

“The skies bleed for him.”

He was sprinting now, heart pounding in his chest as he made for the temple. The trail was marked, through streets and over sands, by immense footprints painted in blood.

Hanth could barely remember fear, but it was coming back swiftly. Overhead, thunder roared, lightning painted the skies a brilliant white for a moment. And for a moment, in shadows, he saw them, a hundred wings flapping, a hundred gazes turned to the city.

And its people.

He ran faster.

The temple doors were smashed open, the bar that had held them fast lay shattered on the ground. Darkness loomed within, the loneliness that only came from a god neglected. He charged in.

The temple was dark inside, darker than it was the last time he had been here. Dominating the center was the pool twenty men across. The waters were calm, placid, not a ripple to them.

Despite the thunderous heartbeat pulsing from beneath them.

Hanth stared at the water, wincing. The beating heart was almost unbearable here, an agony to listen to as its pulse quickened, blood raced with anticipation. Yet he forced himself to stare at it.

“Their jealous waters hold him prisoner.”

And then, to the tower of tattooed flesh and graying hair that stood at its edge.

“They call you Hanth, now, do they?”

Rashodd’s smile would have been repellent even if not for the hideous scarring of his face. Still, his half-missing nose, the crimson scab where an ear had once been, and his wiry beard certainly didn’t make him any more pleasant to look upon.