‘Then don’t.’
A breeze sang across the sea, heavy with waking warmth. As if possessed of a sense of humour all its own, it pulled their long hair up into the sky, strands of silver and gold batting playfully at each other.
The stars disappeared completely. The sun found its courage in the murmurs of the forest and the shore’s crude symphony. Day rose.
‘Time to go soon, huh?’ She glanced out at the orange horizon. ‘I should probably prepare myself.’
‘I haven’t even told you my plan,’ he replied. ‘You might not even be involved.’
‘Of course I’m involved,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’m the smart one.’
She patted a pouch at her belt before darting off down the beach, long hair trailing behind her. Lenk watched her go and found a smile creeping of its own accord onto his face. She was pleasant company indeed, he thought, and her imminent death would indeed be a tragedy.
In moments, the sounds of her fleeting feet were replaced by a decidedly lazier step. Lenk glanced over his shoulder to spy Denaos approaching, scratching himself in all manner of places that hardly needed bringing attention to. Hair a mess, vest hanging open around his torso, he casually slurped at a tin cup brimming with coffee.
‘Good morning.’ He paused to take a long sip, glancing at Kataria’s diminishing form. ‘My goodness, driven her away at last, have you? Did I miss something fun?’
‘Solitude and tranquility,’ Lenk grumbled.
‘Both hard to come by.’ He nodded. ‘I’d be rightly irate, were I you.’
‘What are you doing up, anyway?’ The young man tilted his head at the rogue. ‘You don’t usually stir before midday unless you have to piss or you’re on fire.’
‘First of all, that only happened once. And I couldn’t sleep. Everyone was keeping me up.’
‘Everyone, huh?’
‘Everyone,’ he grunted. ‘Gariath snores like the beast he is and Asper snores like the beast she ought to resemble. Dreadaeleon and his green-haired harlot were the worst, though.’
‘What, he wanted a lullaby?’
‘Apparently so.’ The rogue shrugged. ‘He says her songs help him focus his Venarie or clear his mind or empty his bowels or some equally stupid wizardly garbage, I don’t know. At any rate, the little trollop of the sea apparently doesn’t
‘Not sleeping, same as yourself,’ Lenk replied.
‘Unfortunate.’ He shook his head and sipped. ‘I’m not sure what the procedure for marching into a demon’s nest is, but I’m certain it requires at least eight hours of rest. You can’t scream for mercy if you’re yawning, after all.’
‘I’m going to miss these little chats.’
‘Well, I’ll burn a candle for you later, if I happen to remember in between offering thanks to Silf that it wasn’t me who got his head eaten.’
‘Oh?’ Someone giggled. ‘You think your God loves you enough to spare you that?’
Both men glanced up, expecting to see Kataria, though neither seemed to recognise the creature stalking towards them. It was her height, same slender build, same pointed, notched ears, but it wore an entirely different skin.
Jagged bands of glistening black warpaint alternated down her body and arms, giving her a dark, animalistic appearance. Her broad canines were white against the two solid bands of black that covered her eyes and mouth. Her ears, also painstakingly painted, twitched excitedly.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’
‘Not precisely the word I’d use to describe you.’ Lenk looked her up and down. ‘And yet. . I feel compelled to ask — why?’
‘Why not?’ She rolled her black shoulders. ‘I’m about to go to war, aren’t I?’
‘We’ve done that before,’ Lenk replied, ‘and I’ve never seen you like. . this. . What the hell are you supposed to be, anyway?’
‘A shict about to receive the favour of her Goddess,’ she said proudly. ‘When the land is smeared with bodies, Riffid will look down and see my colours,’ she thumped her chest, ‘and know that it was Kataria of the sixth tribe who killed them.’
‘I see.’ Lenk didn’t bother to hide his cringe. ‘So. . you expect to make a lot of kills today?’
‘You really are stupid, aren’t you?’ She grinned and tapped a particularly large stripe on her belly. ‘This is camouflage, you moron. We’re going into some place likely rather dark and, if you hadn’t noticed, I’m paler than a corpse.’
‘Convenience, I’d say.’ Denaos sipped his coffee. ‘I mean, if you’ve got the pallor of a dead body, that’s one less step before you’re actually dead. I suppose the paint will let me know which corpse is yours when you wash up on shore.’
‘If you live to see her die,’ Lenk said.
Denaos stared at him blankly, disbelief straining to express itself in his eyes as a particularly venomous curse strained to break free from his lips. Lenk, for his part, merely smiled back.
‘As the shict said, your God doesn’t love you nearly as well as you’d hope.’
The rogue paused, opened his mouth as if to say something, but could find nothing more than a sigh to offer.
‘I take it, then,’ he said, ‘that you’ve given some thought to the recovery of our precious tome.’
‘I have.’ Lenk nodded.
‘Thusly, you’ve no doubt a plan.’
‘I do.’
Denaos stared at him, purse-lipped, for a moment.
‘And?’
The young man smiled gently. ‘And you’re not going to like it.’
Twenty-One
The frogmen, this one decided, still had needs.
It, for it was now far beyond a ‘he’, would have thought it slightly ironic, had this one still the capability to appreciate such a concept. This one had long ago grown past the desire for what it vaguely remembered as being needs. Comforts of family, of flesh and of company were no longer recalled; families died, flesh was weak, company had shunned him.
And yet, flashes of those necessities still clung frustratingly to this one, the claws of the weak and sorrowful creature this one had long ago sought to kill. While other frogmen had received Mother Deep’s blessing and no longer felt the need for food or for air or for water beyond a body to immerse themselves in, this one still felt knots in its belly, could not remain underwater.
Nor, this one thought irately, could this one ignore the growing pain in its loins any longer.
Quietly, this one crept into an alcove, carved by the crumbling tower as walls fell and endless blue seeped in. This one glanced over its shoulder; if any of those ones had seen it, it knew, there would be shame, there would be pain, and Mother Deep’s blessing would continually evade this one.
As it would continue to evade this one, it knew, after it dropped its loincloth to spill its water in the shallow pool that had formed in the alcove’s corner. To desecrate water blessed by the Shepherds, this one knew, was to displease Mother Deep. This one was not worried, however; Mother Deep was kind, Mother Deep was forgiving, Mother Deep had given this one the blessing of forgetting and a new life beneath the endless blue.
This one was not worried as it let itself leak out into the water with a great sigh.
This one was not worried as it felt the air grow a little colder.
