Tome of the Undergates

‘Frogmen.’ She looked thoughtful as her ears twitched. ‘Something else, too.’

‘Abysmyths?’ Lenk tightened his grip on his sword.

‘No.’ She shook her head and frowned. ‘I thought I had heard something else, but I must have been mistaken.’

‘You’re never mistaken,’ Lenk said, quickly correcting himself, ‘when it comes to noise, anyway. What did you hear?’

‘A female’s voice.’ Her frown grew so heavy that it threatened to fall off her face and splash into the murk. ‘It almost. . sounded like the siren.’

‘Aha!’ Denaos grimaced at his own cry. ‘I could have told you. She’s led us to our deaths.’

‘Kat said it sounded like Greenhair,’ Lenk replied harshly, ‘we don’t know if it’s her or not.’

‘How many things in this blessed world of ours sound like some fish-whore?’ the rogue snarled. ‘How many?’

‘I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?’

Lenk hefted his sword, gave Kataria a gentle push to urge her onwards. The shict responded by nocking an arrow, slinking forwards silently. Creeping into the gloom as they did, their steps heralded by the sounds of water sloshing, neither man nor shict glanced over a shoulder to see if the rogue followed.

Denaos had always thought of himself as a sensible man, a sensible man with very vocal instincts that currently shouted at him to turn around and let the others die on their own. It was suicide to follow; if, by some miracle of faith in fish-women, Greenhair hadn’t betrayed them, there might be another siren within the forsaken hold.

He recalled Greenhair’s song, her power to send men, even dragonmen, into slumber. The thought of snoring blissfully at some sea-witch’s tune while an Abysmyth quietly munched his head down to the neck held no great appeal.

Even if they did survive long enough to lay a finger upon the tome, what then? How would they escape? Even if they survived and were paid in full, how long would it be before he was placed in another situation where head-eating was a very likely outcome?

The sensible thing, he told himself, would be to turn back now, find a merchantman and hitch a ride back to decent folk.

‘Sensible,’ he reaffirmed to himself, ‘indeed.’

He knew that the tome lay with something that he did not seek to find. But he knew much more certainly that the things he didn’t want to find were in the shadows that turned sensible men to cowards.

And, he reminded himself as he sighed and began to wade after them, he was a sensible man.

‘I do not remember ever being loved by Gods.’

The frogman finished its sentence with a slam of its staff, driving it against the stones, letting the various bones attached to its head rattle against its ivory shaft. Dozens of pale faces looked up at the creature reverently, black eyes reflecting the torches that burnt with a pure emerald fire.

Dozens of faces, the frogman thought, free of scars, free of birthmarks, free of overbites, underbites, deformities, hair colours. Dozens of faces, all the same beaming paleness, all the same mouths twisted shut in reverence, all the same black eyes looking up at it, silently begging for the sermon to continue.

And the frogman indulged them.

‘I do not remember a day without suffering,’ it said, letting its voice echo off the vast chamber walls. ‘And I do not remember a day when my suffering served any purpose but for the amusement of what I once thought of as beings perfect and pure.’

The faces tensed in reply. The frogman snarled, baring teeth.

‘And I do not want to remember.’

At this, they bobbed their heads in unison, muttering quietly through their own jagged teeth.

‘What I remember,’ it hissed, ‘is praying daily at the shores for a false mother to deliver food. What I remember is starvation. What I remember is those that I once called my family being swallowed up and the waves mocking me. I remember.’ It levelled its staff at the congregation. ‘And so do you.’

‘Memory is our curse,’ they replied in unison, bowing their heads. ‘May Mother Deep forever free us.’

‘I thought the sea to be harsh and cruel, then,’ it continued, ‘but that is when I heard Her song.’ It tilted its head back, closing its eyes in memory. ‘I remember Her calling to me, singing to me. I remember Her assuring me that my life was precious, valuable, but my body was weak. I remember Her leading me here, granting me Her gifts, to breathe the water, to dance beneath the waves,’ its face stiffened, ‘to forget. .

‘I do not remember Gods talking to me.’ It craned to face the congregation once more. ‘I do remember them asking me for my wealth and to deny others their wealth.’ Its smile was broad and full of teeth. ‘And so did Mother Deep bid me to shatter their pretences by asking these ones to come, penniless and alone, fearful and betrayed, full of aching memory. She bade these ones to return and forget the lies they had been told. She gave these ones gifts and asked for but one thing in return.’

The faces brightened in response, reflecting the frogman’s smile.

‘She asks,’ they chanted, ‘only that these ones aid the Shepherds as the Shepherds aid these ones.’

They spoke, and their voices reverberated through the water that had claimed the stones and the few stones the water had spared drowning. They spoke, and their voices caused the green flames to leap to life at their words as they burned in their sconces. They spoke, and a dozen as yet unheard voices, sealed behind sacs of flesh and skins of mucus, pulsated in response.

It would have thought them disgusting, it reflected, and chastised itself for the blasphemy. Something that it once was would have thought them disgusting, these glorious creations of Mother Deep that clung to the walls and pillars. Now, the frogman, the creature that it had become, knew them to be Her blessings made manifest.

They pulsated, beat like miniature hearts, bulbous and glistening, misshapen and glowing. Inside these great and vile creations of flesh and fluid, something stirred. Trapped within these skins, something sought to glow with the light of life. Beyond the glistening moisture that clung to them, something reflected only blackness.

‘Disgusting,’ Lenk muttered, sneering at the pulsating sacs. ‘What are they?’

Neither rogue nor shict had a response for him beyond a reflection of his own repulsion. The vast and sprawling chamber, as though it had not yet been desecrated enough by the black water that drowned it and the green and red graffiti that caked its walls, was absolutely infected with the things. They clung to every corner, bobbed in the water, hung from every pillar. The largest of them was suspended directly above the circle of frogmen, twitching with a thunderous pulse, threatening to drop at any moment.

‘I’m rather more concerned with what they’re doing,’ Denaos muttered with a grimace as the frogmen began to rhythmically sway. ‘Any ceremony accompanied by ritualistic chanting tends to end with eviscerations, in my experience.’

‘I am slightly tempted to enquire, but all the same.’ Lenk nudged Kataria’s shoulder. ‘Any sign of Abysmyths?’

‘Not that I can see.’ Her eyes were narrowed, sweeping the chamber. ‘Take that as you will, though. They’re large, black things in a large, black room.’

‘Well, we can hardly wait here for them to come and eat us,’ the young man murmured. ‘We’ll have to move soon.’

‘To where, exactly?’

Lenk glanced about the hall. Options, it seemed, were limited. The chamber had undoubtedly once been grand, though its vast ceiling had begun to sink, its marching pillars had crumbled and its floor was completely lost to the water, save for the sprawling stone island that the frogmen congregated upon.

He didn’t even bother to note the torches crackling an unnatural green and the hanging sacs; there would be time enough to soil himself over those details later.

Though nearly unnoticeable through the gloom, he spied a crumbling archway at the chamber’s furthest corner. Half-drowned, half-cloaked in shadow, what lay beyond it was veiled in forbidding void.

‘There,’ he pointed, ‘that’s the way.’

‘How do you figure?’ Kataria grunted.

‘Because we seem to have a habit of going into places that would result in our deaths and I’d hate to ruin our