The Skybound Sea (29 page)

Desperation.

Fear.

A hope that somehow, some way, everything that he was thinking was utterly and terribly wrong.

“How do you know?” he asked.

She shook her head, her chains rattling softly. “It’s never clear. Not without suffering.”

“Suffering?”

“Only with suffering comes understanding.” She closed her eyes, letting the truth of that settle upon her, atop the fear and the anger. “Great suffering.”

He nodded solemnly. That which she felt within her she saw within him as his eyes smoldered, sputtered into empty whites.

“They come to you with suffering,” he said, “when they are needed. That is why you called to them,” he hesitated before continuing, “that night.”

To stare into the white eyes of this man, as she had stared into the red eyes of the man who had violated her, should have been enough to destroy her. She should have collapsed, slumped in her chains, lost all will to raise her head again. But there was something in these eyes, something bright and vivid, that burned even more brightly than fire.

This man was no god. This man could be made to see what he had done.

She looked past him. Nai hung limply in her manacles, drawing in sharp, short breaths.

For her sake, Asper had to believe that.

“How much?” It was the edge in his voice that seized her attention, the glimmer in his eye that held it. “How much suffering before they appear?”

“I don’t—” She paused, reconsidered. “Much,” she replied softly. “There is much suffering, much regret, much penance.”

“And one cannot begin … without the other.”

In the instant he turned away from her, she saw it. In the corner of his eye, as though it had been hiding from her the whole time, there was a little too much of something. Perhaps it was too much of an eager glimmer in his eye, too easy a smile that came with too much knowing.

She saw it.

And in that instant, she knew that whatever had left him, it wasn’t cruelty.

“No,” she whispered.

Whether she had heard Asper or the sound of Sheraptus approaching, Nai looked up. What it took Asper until now to see, she found in an instant. Her face twisted up into a grimace, her hands clenched, she bit her lower lip so hard that blood gushed readily.

“No. No.” Nai shook her head, fervor increasing with each word. “No, no, no, no, no.” She was all but flailing as he approached her, her chains rattling wildly, her heels scraping furiously against the floor as she tried to back away.
“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!”

“Wait!
WAIT!
” Asper called after him. “This isn’t what I meant! This isn’t what you—”

“It is,” Sheraptus said softly. “It makes perfect sense. Why would gods come unless called? Unless the need was great?”

“I didn’t
do
anything!” Nai wailed. The cloth of her slippers wore through in a moment and soon, she was painting the floor with her blood as her feet desperately scrabbled. “I didn’t. I
DIDN’T!
I’ve been good! I … I screamed! Please, no. Please, please, please, please—”

“Stop!” Asper cried out, hurling herself at him. The chains caught her, chuckled in the rattle of links as they pulled her back to the wall. “This isn’t what I meant! Stop!
Stop!
”

The metal of her manacles groaned, growing weary of her futile attempts. They tugged her back to the wall, pleading in creaking metal to spare herself the torment. She spoke louder to be heard over him, screaming wildly at him with all manner of pleas, all manner of curses.

Between the chains and herself, she couldn’t hear the sound of metal sizzling, of stone cracking.

Nai’s wailing ceased as he came upon her, looking her over with wide, glimmering eyes. She fell still in her chains, as though if she held just still enough, stayed just silent enough, he might move on. Even then, though, she drew in wheezing breaths, sniffling tears through her nostrils with each gasp.

Sheraptus stood there, hands folded behind his back, calmly studying her. Asper held her breath, watching, waiting, praying.

Humble do I pray and humble do I ask—

Slowly, he unfolded his hands, raised them up to frame Nai’s face delicately as she winced.

You who gave up Your body so that we might know—

His fingers splayed out slowly, each joint creaking as they did, like the long legs of great purple spiders, the tips gently settling upon her temples and cheeks.

I know I don’t deserve it, I know I doubted You but—

“Please,” Nai whispered.

Please—

Sheraptus smiled gently.

Please—

The glimmer in his eyes became a spark.

PLEASE
.

And he spoke a word.

Nai’s scream was lost in the violent, laughing crackle of electricity. Asper watched, eyes wide, yearning to be blinded by the flashes of electricity that leapt from his fingertips in laughing lashes, sharing some sick joke with Nai’s flesh that only it found funny.

“STOP!”
Nai screamed, struggling to hold onto language.
“STOP! PLEASE!”

“Don’t beg me,” Sheraptus said gently. “
Them
. You have to ask
them
to come.”

Smoke came in gray plumes, mercilessly refusing to hide the grimace of her face painted by flashes of blue, the shedding of her cloth as electric spears rent her garments. Asper could look away, to pray, to do anything.

And without thought, without prayer, without blinking, she began to walk forward.

“HELP! PLEASE!”
Nai wailed
.
“TALANAS! DAEON! GALATAUR!”

“There we are,” Sheraptus cooed encouragingly. “Just a little more now.”

The flashes grew stronger, their laughter louder, their macabre jokes increasingly hilarious as they plucked at her skin. Hair smoked, stood on end. Her lips curled back to expose gums. A nipple blackened amidst a mass of twitching flesh.

The chains caught Asper, tried to pull her back. She continued to walk forward, unthinking, unfeeling. The searing of her wrist, she did not notice. The shattering of stone behind her, she did not hear.

“Louder, now, louder,” Sheraptus coaxed. “It can’t be too much longer now.”

What tore out of Nai’s mouth was without words, without emotion. It was the kind of raw, vocal bile offered up when there was nothing left within her. From deep in the darkness beyond the chamber, more voices lent theirs to hers, more screaming joining with hers.

They clashed like cathedral bells at first, each one striving to be heard over the other, before finding an agonized harmony, blending into a single perfect scream.

Asper didn’t even hear the chains break, nor did she hear the sizzle of burning metal as the manacle fell from her left wrist, scorched and blackened.

She noticed her palm glowing with hellish red light, the bones black and visible beneath a transparent sheath of skin, only when she raised it up, extended it authoritatively, marched toward the black figure.

And wrapped it about Sheraptus’s skinny neck.

Instantly, the laughter stopped, the screaming stopped, the speaking stopped. The lightning leapt back into Sheraptus’s hands, which calmly lowered themselves to his sides, as though he had simply lost interest.

The only sign that anything was wrong was the sickening crack resounding in the silence as his shoulder popped out of place.

“What … what is …” he gasped for a moment before there was a faint sucking sound, his windpipe collapsing.

“I don’t know,” Asper said, tightening her grip. “But it was sent here for you.”

Something broke beneath him, a shinbone snapping, realigning awkwardly, and snapping again until his right leg possessed six different joints. He collapsed to his knees, body trembling as though it were about to come undone.

“You …” he rasped in great, inward breaths, “you … pure … destruction.”

Asper said nothing. The hellish red light of the arm intensified, grew fat off the suffering. Sheraptus held up an arm, watched it twist and diminish, as though something sucked the sinew right out of it until there was nothing left but brittle, marrowless bones.

“Only … gods … Aeon in … a human,” he rasped. “Gods … help …”

Snap
. His knee erupted.

“Help …”

Snap
. His arm folded in on itself.

“Gods …”

Creak
. His neck began to—

“MASTER!”

She heard the cry, heard the iron boots crashing on the stone floor. She had been discovered, she knew, even without looking to see the netherling charging up the corridor, sword at the ready. Not yet, she knew; they might kill her, but not before she could kill him.

As the netherling approached, she flew her right hand out errantly, intended to catch a blow meant for her neck, to swat impotently at the netherling, anything to buy just a few more moments to finish what she had started. She expected nothing.

She certainly didn’t expect her fist to find the female’s ribcage.

And she didn’t expect to feel it explode beneath her hand.

The netherling fell backward, wailing and clutching her side. Asper felt her own grip on Sheraptus loosen as her wide-eyed attentions turned toward her right hand. Her wonderfully normal, uselessly normal right hand.

Upon whose palm a faint, white dot of light began to glow, like a great eye opening for the first time.

It stared at her and she stared at it, unblinking. Within it, she could feel her blood flow swiftly, perfectly, in perfect harmony with the beating of her heart. And even as it slowed, she felt the throbbing pain of her left hand diminish, its hellish red glow dim, only for the white pinprick of light to grow wider, the eye broader.

She blinked. It stuttered.

And then winked out completely.

She continued to stare at her palm, once again perfectly normal. She stared right up until she heard the sound of metal boots two steps behind her.

Xhai had come without warcry or concern, letting her fist speak for her. And Asper was sent reeling, succumbing to its argument as she flew across the cavern, struck the wall, slid to the floor.

Xhai was upon her instantly, boot pressed to her throat, digging its sharp heel into the tender flesh of her neck. She gurgled, pounding at her foot with wonderful, useless, normal hands once more. Xhai narrowed her eyes, pressed a little harder.

“STOP!”

Sheraptus’s voice was barely a voice at all. More a suppurating gasp. His hand swept with no authority, but merely flailed.

“Not kill … her,” he rasped. “Take away … sent for me …”

Xhai frowned, looking from him to her.

“NOW!”

He didn’t specify, Xhai didn’t ask. She reached down, seized Asper by her hair, and began to drag her away. The priestess didn’t care, her eyes fell to the girl hanging from the wall, whose blackened flesh still smoked, whose body still twitched.

Who still drew breath and whispered.

And through the pain and the confusion, Asper smiled as she was hauled into the darkness.

She was far away when Sheraptus made another noise, far too far to hear him chuckle to himself. Far too far to see him stare up, past the cavern roof, past the sky above, into heaven.

“Great suffering … still alive …” A contented smile came over his face. “You
do
listen.”

“
Q
ai 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.”