Sam Sykes - Tome of the Undergates

‘I can’t, really.’

‘Oh. . well.’

He managed to pull himself up enough to see a rapidly approaching bank of sand in the far distance. As the waves lapped around the island, revealing jagged rocks jutting from the shore, he winced and braced himself as the island grew closer with each blinking eye.

Lenk stared upon the wreckage with dismay.

The companion boat lay on its side upon the beach, several yards up a shore marred by a deep skid-mark. Its red ribs jutted from the jagged hole gaping in its flank, as if it had been harpooned. Its shredded sail hung from a splintering mast like flesh flayed from bone. His frown grew so long it hurt his face as he waited for the carrion flies to begin swarming over it.

‘At least no one was hurt too badly,’ piped up a cheerful voice from beside him.

He glared at the grinning shict and then at the bandage wrapped tightly around his arm. He flexed it a little, wincing as the cut beneath it seared his skin.

‘Well.’ She coughed. ‘ I wasn’t hurt too badly.’

‘Lucky for us,’ he grumbled.

He cast a glance over Kataria, who bore no physical injuries aside from a few scuffs and sand stains on her pale skin. When the vessel had hit the shore, she had been tossed into a nearby shrubbery. He had had the misfortune of nearly impaling his arm on a jutting timber rib. Disdainfully, he twitched his forearm again and saw a bit of red seep through the white bandages.

He glanced at the long skid in the sand where he had landed after being hurled from the vessel. He winced and made a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity had prevented him from striking any of the bone-white jagged stones jutting from the sands like teeth. The tips of the same stones, their white hues mottled with coral the colour of vomit, emerged from the surface of the blue, foamy seas beyond.

A sea of trees, rising from a blanket of shrubbery, roots and vines, stood behind them; the only landmark breaking a nearly perfectly endless sheet of white sand and rock. At a glance, it seemed lush, Lenk thought, but he knew well that forests could be just as unforgiving and desolate as deserts. The corpse of the vessel, sprawled out on the sand like a beached whale, wood drying under the sun like bones bleaching, seemed a charming example.

‘It could be worse,’ Kataria offered, snapping him from his gloomy reverie.

It certainly could , Lenk thought.

He glanced over his shoulder to where Gariath squatted. The dragonman had taken the worst of the crash, having been tossed from the prow violently, skidding across the sands until his violent journey ended abruptly at a nearby palm tree. Cuts from the beach rocks and thorny shrubs covered his red skin and splinters from the tree jutted from his back.

Regardless of his injuries, the hardy dragonman had refused all aid.

‘Human medicine,’ he had growled, ‘is for skinned knees and constipation.’

Instead, he had skulked over to the shade of the same tree he had caromed off and sat quietly.

Dragonmen, particularly red ones, Lenk had been told, were resilient creatures and had an innate ability to heal themselves through sheer force of will. If there was a will stronger than Gariath’s, Lenk had never seen it, for the dragonman’s wounds were no longer bleeding.

He would have thanked his companion for declining aid if it was out of generosity. There weren’t a great many supplies to go around for the purposes of treating injuries.

His arm had required a good deal of Asper’s bandages and Denaos’s scrapes had required a good amount of salve. Most of the priestess’s aid, however, had gone to the one who had caused the wreck in the first place. Lenk’s eyes narrowed to thin, angry slits as he cast a glare further down the beach.

Dreadaeleon sat propped up against a rock, Asper squatting by his side, working to tighten the bandage around his head that covered the gash at his temple. A lot of bandages , Lenk noted with a wince, too many to hold in such a small brain.

Even now, the wizard clutched his head as he lay against the rock, pampered like a baby. Lenk’s teeth ground together so hard, sparks almost shot from his mouth. He felt his hands clench into fists, heedless of the strain it put on his wounded arm. Kataria noticed his ire rising and laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘Now, calm down,’ she said soothingly. ‘He already told you-’

‘He told me nothing,’ Lenk snarled. ‘If we’re going to be stuck on some Gods-forsaken island and starve to death because of him, I want to know why .’

Not waiting for a reply from his companion, the young man stormed over to the boy’s resting place with such fury in his stride as to burn the sands beneath him. He paused nearby and folded his arms over his chest, focusing his icy scowl upon the wizard. Asper said nothing and continued working on her patient’s splint, though her hands trembled more than a little under Lenk’s frigid stare.

‘Well?’ Lenk snarled after several moments’ silence.

‘Well what?’ Dreadaeleon replied, not opening his eyes.

‘Well, how’s your little scrape, you poor little lamb?’ Lenk said, his sarcasm burning. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ the wizard replied, equally vitriolic. ‘I suppose I thought: “ I bet Lenk would find it hysterical if I decided to crash the boat. ”’ He snorted. ‘I already told you, I don’t know what happened.’

‘How?’ the young man spat back. ‘How do you not know what you were doing?’

‘The intricacies of my mind are of such staggering complexity that they might very well cause yours to explode, leak out of your ears and puddle at your feet.’ He tilted his nose up. ‘Suffice it to say, I knew exactly what I was doing, I just wasn’t sure why.’

‘Oh, well, thank Khetashe for that distinction!’

‘Lenk,’ Kataria said, creeping up to his side. ‘You know Dread wouldn’t do it on purpose.’

‘Well, I’d like to know whose purpose he did do it on,’ the young man growled, casting a sideways glare at the shict.

Despite the protests of his conscience, his rage cared neither for compassion nor logic. It took all his willpower not to flay the boy alive and use his skin to patch the vessel’s wound.

‘I’m not sure what happened,’ Dreadaeleon said, finally opening his eyes and looking at Lenk. ‘I was focusing on moving the ship, as you asked, when I suddenly. . heard something.’

‘Heard something?’ Lenk asked, screwing up his face in confusion. ‘When you focus, you can’t hear bloody murder two inches from your ear.’ His sniffed, glaring at Kataria. ‘I know from experience.’

‘Baby,’ Kataria grunted.

‘It wasn’t in my ears,’ Dreadaeleon said softly, ‘it was. . in my head.’

‘So you were just going mad?’

‘No, Lenk,’ Asper said, looking up. ‘I. . I heard it too.’

‘Really?’ Lenk asked, more in sarcasm than genuine curiosity. ‘So tell me, why didn’t you go insane?’

‘She’s not sensitive to magic,’ Dreadaeleon said, ‘I am.’

‘If she’s not sensitive, then how did she hear it at all?’

‘I don’t know,’ Dreadaeleon said, shaking his head. ‘It’s possible that-’

He cut himself off and fell back against the rock, his face screwed up in pain as he clutched his skull.

‘What now?’ Lenk asked, an inkling of concern seeping through his anger.

‘Magic headache,’ Dreadaeleon replied with a halting, pain-filled voice.

‘What?’

‘Wizard’s headache,’ Asper said, a hand going to Dreadaeleon’s shoulder. ‘Magic takes a toll on the body.’

‘If I use magic too much,’ Dreadaeleon replied, breathing hard, ‘or cast too many spells at once, I get a headache.’ He glared up at Lenk through strained eyes. ‘I’ve told you this before.’

Before Lenk could form a reply, he was suddenly aware of a tall figure standing between him and Kataria. He glanced up, startled as he saw Denaos’s concerned face staring down at the wizard.

‘And just where have you been this whole time?’ the young man asked.

‘Asper asked me to get some water for Dread,’ the rogue replied, holding up a bulging waterskin.

‘We have water on the boat,’ Lenk said, casting a glance over his shoulder. ‘Most of the cargo was secured, it shouldn’t be damaged.’

‘True,’ Denaos replied with a nod, ‘but I thought I might as well take a look around, since we may be here a while.’

‘It won’t take that long to fix the ship,’ Lenk replied. ‘With any luck, we’ll be back out on the sea in a day or two.’ His eyes steeled. ‘Every day we’re on land, the Abysmyth’s lead increases. Every day we hesitate, another-’

‘We’re on it.’

‘What?’

‘We’re here.’ He stomped the earth. ‘This is Ktamgi.’

‘How do you know?’

The rogue reached down to pluck a single grain of sand from the beach. He eyed it for a moment before holding it next to Kataria’s midsection.

‘Just a shade whiter, as Argaol said.’ He pulled back his hand before Kataria could slap it. ‘Check the sea charts and you’ll see I’m right.’ He blinked at Lenk suddenly, coughing. ‘Sorry for ruining whatever speech you had, though. I’m sure it was astonishingly inspirational.’

‘When did you learn to read sea charts?’ Asper shot a suspicious glare at the rogue.

‘Around the time I learned how to avoid angry debt collectors by signing on as a deckhand and fleeing the city,’ he replied with a wink, ‘but that’s another story.’ He tossed the waterskin to Dreadaeleon, the wizard making only half an attempt to catch it as it bounced off his face to land in his lap. ‘Drink up, little man.’

‘I see. .’ Lenk said, furrowing his brow in brief thought. ‘Well, if it is as you say, we’ll take a look around, then.’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to take another moment to berate me for finding the island?’ Dreadaeleon asked with a wry smirk. ‘Or did you perhaps have some praise for me?’

‘What I’ve got for you is a length of steel and few compunctions about where I jam it,’ Lenk snarled. ‘Now shut up before I plug the ship’s hole with your fat head.’

‘Still,’ Asper said, ‘is it wise to move out now?’ She glanced at Dreadaeleon. ‘Everyone’s more than a little roughed up.’

‘We’re not too bad,’ Lenk said, glancing at his arm. ‘We’re only looking for traces of the Abysmyth and the tome.’ He glanced around his companions. ‘If you find it, don’t try to fight it on your own.’ He cast a concerned glare at Gariath. ‘Come and get the rest of us.’

The dragonman merely snorted in reply.

‘How are we even going to hurt it?’ Denaos asked.

‘We’ll worry about that later,’ Lenk said. ‘For now, we just need to find out whether it’s still here and still has the tome.’ He looked disparagingly at the copse of trees and scratched his chin. ‘We might as well spread out to find whatever resources we can.’

‘That makes sense.’ Asper dusted her hands off, rose to her feet. ‘The more food and water we find here, the less we have to use from the ship.’

‘Not to mention that spreading out will make it easier for the Abysmyth to hunt us down and eat our heads,’ Denaos added with a nod. ‘As per usual, your genius cannot be praised with mere-’

‘Yeah, we’re all going to die, I get it,’ Lenk interrupted, waving the rogue away. ‘Anyway, foraging shouldn’t be a problem. Gariath alone can probably sniff-’