Sam Sykes - Tome of the Undergates

He sighed again, stuck his nose into the air and inhaled deeply. No stink of human.

And yet, this time, he did not lower his snout.

Instead, he sniffed at the air once again, felt his heart begin to pound, ear-frills fan out attentively. The aroma filled his nostrils with memory and he summoned visions and sounds through the scent: clawed footprints in the earth, wings beating on the air, rain on heavy leather, uncooked meat on grass.

Rivers and rocks.

The boy was forgotten, humans disappeared from his concerns as he fell to all fours and rushed along the ground, following the scent as it wound over roots, under branches, around rocks and through bushes. He followed it as it twisted and turned one hundred times in as many breaths, each time growing fainter.

No, no, no , he whimpered inside his head.

The footprints in the earth became his own as he retraced them.

Not now!

The sound of wings beating on the air became the whisper of waves.

I’ve almost found you. .

The scent of rain was suddenly tinged with salt.

Please, don’t go yet!

Rivers and rocks became sand and surf.

He was on the beach suddenly, the forest behind him and the scent gone, a snake stretched too thin around the tree trunks. He rose, turned and thrust his nose into the air. Nothing filled his nostrils. He inhaled until the inside of his snout was raw and quivering and the stink of salt water made him want to vomit.

And salt water was all he received.

The sensation of weakness was foreign to Gariath. He had not felt weak in such a long time, not when blades kissed his flesh and cudgels bounced off his bones; yet he could remember the feeling well. He had felt it once before, so keenly, when he held two bodies not his enemies’ in his arms, stared into their eyes as rain draped their faces in shrouds of fresh water.

He had collapsed then, too, as he did now.

He had wept, then, too.

Drops of salt clouded his senses, but not so much that he could not perceive the new stink entering his nostrils. He did not stop to consider what it might be, whether it was something he ought or ought not to kill. His sadness twisted to fury as he drank deeply the aroma and began to anticipate when it would soon turn to the coppery odour of blood.

Fuelled by anger, he tore down the beach on all fours. When he sighted his prey, he stopped only to consider how she might die.

She, for it reeked of womanhood, was pale, beyond even the ghostly sheen of the pointy-eared human. She was so pale as to appear insubstantial, as sunlight shimmering on the sea. Hair the colour of a healthy tree’s crown cascaded down her back, its endless verdancy broken only by the large, blue fin cresting her head.

The Abysmyths have such a fin , he thought resentfully.

She was a mess of angles, frail and delicate and wrapped in a wispy sheet of silk that did barely anything to hide the glistening blues and whites of her skin. Through a nose little more than a bony outcropping she exhaled a fine mist. At her neck, what appeared to be feathery gills fluttered.

As vile as she was to behold, the sight of the young boy with stringy black locks in her hands was far more disgusting.

The wizard lay with his head in her lap, a look of contentment creasing his face, as though he were a recently suckled infant. And, as though soothing an infant, the female creature ran webbed fingers through his hair. Through lips a pale blue, she hummed a tune unearthly, one that carried over waves as it carried through the boy, sending both into comatose calmness.

What might temper the sea, however, could not cool the blood of a Rhega . She sought to sing him deaf; his ear-frills twitched. She sought to sing his eyes shut; they widened. She sought to carry his bloodlust from his shoulders; he vowed to set it upon hers with two clawed fists.

The fate of the boy was irrelevant; whether she cradled his ensorcelled breathing body or his ensorcelled corpse, she would find herself in a far deeper sleep than she had put him into.

Gariath’s wings unfurled like red sails. His hands clenched into fists so tight as to bloody his palms. His terrifying roar seized her weak song and tore it apart in the air. Upon all fours once more, he charged, levelling his horned head at her frail, angular mouth.

It would feel good to kill again.

Lenk staggered as he stumbled over a tree root, kicking up damp soil and leaves. With a sigh, he glanced down at the earth; whatever modest trail had been present was now nothing more than a smattering of dirt and tubers. If there ever was a trail there at all , he thought to himself, discouraged. How Kataria routinely made it look so easy, he would never know.

Which begged another question. .

‘Why aren’t you in front?’ he asked over his shoulder.

The shict started at his voice, as she had started at every sneeze, cough and curse to pass his lips for the past half-hour. She quickly composed herself, taking a gratuitous step backwards, placing her even further away from him.

‘It’s good practice,’ she replied quickly. ‘You need to learn this sort of stuff to survive.’

‘Not so long as I’ve got you around.’

‘Well, maybe I won’t always be around,’ she snapped back. ‘Ever think of that, dimwit?’

‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ The question came with a sigh, knowing full well that whatever she wished to tell him, he wished not to hear. ‘You’ve been skittish ever since we left the corpse.’

‘Imagine that,’ she sneered, ‘near-death experiences leave me a bit jumpy.’

‘Sure, jumpy.’ He glanced down to the bow drawn in her hands. ‘Are near-death experiences something you’d like to share? Because you’ve had that damn thing drawn and pointed at me for the past half-hour.’

‘Don’t you blame me for being cautious.’

‘Cautious is one thing,’ he replied. ‘You’re just being psychotic now. And while I’ve never begrudged you that before, I have to ask,’ he tilted his head at her, frowning concernedly, ‘what’s wrong?’

Her reaction did nothing to reassure him.

She shifted nervously for a moment, hopping from foot to foot as she glanced about the forest clearing as though noting all possible escape routes. She did not lower her bow, nor relax her grip on its string. She had all the anxiety of a nervous beast while at the same time regarding him as though he were some manner of bloodthirsty predator.

He knew he ought not begrudge her such a mannerism; she had only barely survived the Abysmyth’s touch. Surely, he reasoned, fear and panic were reasonable reactions. But towards him? Towards the man who had saved her? Towards the man who thought of her as not just a shict?

He found his hands tensing of their own volition and quickly fought to relax them. Something within him, however, fought just as hard to keep them in fists. Something within him spoke.

‘ Ignore her ,’ it uttered. ‘ If she wishes to scorn us, then let her rot here while we do our work. There will be more Abysmyths. We know this. ’

He clenched his teeth, straining to ignore the voice. His thoughts were glass, however, and the voice was a vocal rock. He felt them shatter and when the voice spoke again, it was a thousand echoing shards.

‘ LEAVE. ’

‘ KAT !’ he shrieked.

She looked at him, ears twitching as though she could hear what brewed within him. With a grunt, he forced a new face, a frown of concern and narrowed eyes. Don’t upset her , he told himself, don’t let her hear it. .

‘Listen,’ his voice sounded strained to his ears, ‘you can tell me. I’m not the enemy here.’

She cocked her head uncertainly at that. Once more, something shattered within him. His heart contracted under her wary stare and he felt his face twist to match the pain in his chest.

‘Kataria,’ he whispered, ‘don’t you trust me?’

‘Usually,’ she replied.

Her face nearly melted with the force of her sigh as her shoulders slumped, lowering her weapon. Such an expression brought him no relief; she seemed less remorseful and more weary, as though the thought of talking to him was a surrender.

‘Do you remember the Abysmyth?’ she asked.

‘Uh,’ he blinked, ‘it’s rather a hard thing to forget.’

He felt his heart go numb at the sight of her stare, dire and sharp as an arrowhead.

‘Fine,’ he continued, ‘no, I don’t remember it. I can barely remember anything past meeting the damn thing on the beach.’

‘You. . met it?’

‘And had a conversation with it.’ He nodded. ‘It’s rather a polite demon, if you catch it between dismemberings.’

‘You said you barely remembered anything.’ She seemed unimpressed with his humour. ‘What do you remember?’

Voices. Or rather a voice, in my head. Icy and angry. Told me to pick up my sword and kill the demon. Told me a hundred times. Told me to kill, to slaughter, to rip it apart. And I did. And I know I shouldn’t have been able to, but I was. I killed the damn thing and I don’t know why. And when I did, it laughed. The voice laughed and I wanted to laugh, too. I wanted to laugh like a madman and dance in the thing’s blood.

That’s what I remember.

He told her none of this. Instead, he looked up, and replied in one word.

‘You.’

It was not exactly the entire truth, but though it was no lie, Kataria’s frown seemed to suggest that she did not quite believe it. He fought back a sigh and instead took a step forwards, feeling at least some relief when she did not tense up, retreat or bolt outright. Instead, she regarded him carefully with a hint of that same probing curiosity he hadn’t come to miss before she looked at him like he was a lunatic.

‘I saw you,’ he continued, unhindered, ‘I saw you shoot the Abysmyth. I saw the Abysmyth pick you up and I saw you go still and cold as a fish. Then, I saw you drop.’

‘And you know why I dropped?’ she asked.

He blinked, shook his head.

‘Because of you ,’ she replied, ‘because you cut the demon’s arm off, because you killed it.’

‘I didn’t kill it.’

‘I’m fairly sure you did.’

‘We settled this already,’ he replied, ‘the poison killed it. The longfaces killed it.’

‘It didn’t stop moving until you put your sword in it.’

‘The poison took its time, then.’

‘Why are you denying this?’ She seemed as if she wanted to snarl, to spit the words. Instead, she could only shake her head at him. ‘I saw you, too. I saw you kill the demon. I saw you save me .’ Her frown twisted and Lenk could see that her heart sank as well. ‘Why are you denying that ?’

Because , he thought, fingering the hilt of his sword, the Abysmyth can’t be hurt by mortal weapons.

He longed to say such a thing to her, if only so that she might know why he couldn’t say it. Instead, he could do little more than roll his shoulders, shake his head and sigh. She returned the expression and, without any fear, walked past him to take the lead.

Her shoulder brushed against his; she felt cold.

‘So,’ he spoke up, desperate to ease the tension, ‘do you see anything that I might have missed?’

‘Nah.’ She crouched to the earth, glancing over the jungle soil. ‘Something came through here, but I can’t tell who or what. Nothing’s clear.’

The leaves shook in the trees. Birds fled in a sudden burst as a thunderous roar split the forest apart. Kataria rose to her feet, following Lenk’s gaze out and away, towards the distant shore.