Authors: A.E. Marling
She was touching a scar in the kraken’s hide. Her hand jerked back, and the tentacle shifted into view in a flare of colors. A skin of sunrise orange with eyespots of indigo, the appendage boasted colors as bold as a viper’s. That was, apart from the giant crimson suckers.
The entire kraken was visible beneath the waves. Two tentacles carried the boat, the rest swaying together behind a bulbous head. Eyespots moved over the octopus, overlapping and merging like ripples in a pond. The circular patterns also shifted hue to teal, to violet.
Before this colossus, Hiresha was a tiny thing, an insect adrift. She had the same awestruck breathlessness as when visiting a grand monument dedicated to a god. Except this sea deity’s mercy felt like a promise of future cruelty.
Tethiel rested a hand on Hiresha’s shoulder. He said, “Now you also know how it feels to be carried away by a lady of overwhelming presence.”
Emesea swung herself onto the boat. “So gorgeous! Ah, ha! Hold on.”
The tentacles flipped over the boat. With a slurping sound, the suckers let go, and they fell face-first toward the waves.
During the drop, Hiresha had the chance to see the Murderfish disappear. It looked like water rushed into its dome head, washing out the color, and invisibility flowed down its tentacles until even the tips were gone.
The enchantress braced her head before the sea’s impact.
25
Harpoon Swarm
Repairing the cracked mast with only ropes was a task made no easier with a kraken capsizing the boat every hour.
The terror of falling in the water receded into numbness. Hiresha’s insides felt turned to stone while waiting for the next dunking.
“As a child did you ever place a beetle on its back?” Tethiel dragged himself into the newly righted boat then offered Hiresha a hand to grasp. “To watch its black legs dance in the air is to feel like a god. And to feel like a god longer than two minutes is to be bored.”
“I’m not accustomed to being defined as a plaything,” Hiresha said.
“Better that, my heart, than a delectable,” he said. “I fear tonight will be our last chance to depart the sea. We are guests here, and the most welcome guest is he who leaves soonest.”
“The gods withhold their winds from our sail.” Emesea pointed her obsidian knife at Tethiel. “We could offer him to the Flayed Lady. She’d understand his wrinkled hide was the best we could find.”
Hiresha covered her mouth with a hand and motioned the warrior to put away the blade.
“The gods, their winds, and their digestion are not matters mortals should attempt to influence,” Tethiel said.
The enchantress spoke to Tethiel. “Have you thought of improvements to your illusions of concealment?”
“The best way to hide is to make everyone afraid to look. I intend to tailor a nightmare for the Murderfish.”
“Is that possible?” Hiresha remembered how the kraken had ravaged him as the Lord of the Feast.
“This morning I dreamed with Feaster Celaise, and her specialty is preying on beasts. Other than men, that is. And no need to look so astonished, my heart. Enchantresses aren’t the only ones who can conduct business while asleep.”
“So you’re confident?” Hiresha asked.
“I leave declarations of confidence to the cowardly.” Tethiel’s face was a patchwork of peeling sunburn, bloodless skin, and triangle tattoo. “For my work to be a masterpiece, I must know how the Murderfish perceives the world. Does she smell? How does she hear?”
Hiresha and Emesea discussed it with him. The warrior also offered Tethiel a handful of fish oil, for his skin. She winked at him. “Need your hide lovely. Hiresha might change her mind about the sacrifice.”
The enchantress worried what would happen if Tethiel’s illusions failed. She searched for alternatives in her dream laboratory.
She had no offering for the goddess of creativity and innovation, the Opal Mind, except labor. Hiresha tried enchanting Emesea’s lump of obsidian, not an approved substance in the Academy. Only after fifty-eight attempts did Hiresha admit defeat. She could instill it with magic in her dream, but it would always fade upon waking.
“Its crystal lattice is too irregular.” Hiresha spun the rough obsidian out of her hand, and it vanished from her dream.
The enchantress tucked her arms behind her back and gazed up at a mirror of the Murderfish. By habit, Hiresha started moving various shades of topaz over the glass, aligning them with the color of the kraken’s eyespots.
“The diameter of its head is over thirty feet at the widest part of the oval,” the enchantress said. “To overcome a creature of that magnitude will require more than an innovation in enchanting baubles. It’ll take a paradigm shift.”
“To live, you must be willing to kill.” The voice of the Jeweled Feaster called out from the depths of one mirror.
“The boat has enough killers, though I may make an exception for sadistic seafood.”
Hiresha awoke to find the sun setting and Tethiel transforming.
A mane of hair shimmered to his shoulders. His stubble fell out, and his mottled skin turned into what looked like white marble. His torn sleeve regenerated in a sleekness of crimson. He stood as tall as the mast. His stilt-long legs and arms bent, and he cupped Emesea’s chin with fingers that were black fangs.
“What do you say, my heart? Has she outlived her usefulness? I could fortify myself with a Feast.”
Emesea slapped at his hand but could not move him.
Hiresha worried that if she denied him this, he might fail against the Murderfish. The enchantress was afraid, but she found some encouragement in the sail. It swelled with a breeze. Better yet, she could see a channel between the dream storms to the north.
She said, “Kindly save your appetite for the main entrée of kraken. Emesea, attend to the sail.”
“It’s blowing west.” The warrior bounded to the ropes. “But I can tack us north.”
Emesea adjusted the rigging first one way, then the other.
The Paragon
zigzagged northwest by northeast. With each turn they washed too close to an essence tempest for Hiresha’s comfort. The waves beneath the storms heaved with sea life.
The enchantress pointed to a purple tempest. “That one looks like a sandstorm of amethyst shards, does it not?”
Emesea hummed as she yanked a rope. Tethiel sniffed the breeze as a connoisseur might a wine glass.
The Paragon
sailed on as in a canyon with cliffs of light.
“So we’ll catch a land breeze before reaching shore,” Emesea said. “We’ll just swim the last stretch.”
Hiresha did not know how to swim. “Is there another option?”
“Could wait until midmorning tomorrow.”
Hiresha resolved to learn to swim before she died.
The warrior told Hiresha to pack her clothes in an oilskin bag. The enchantress had no choice but to undress in front of Tethiel, and the experience felt like dancing on diamonds barefoot. Yet when she shouldered her way out of her clothes, a second gown gleamed beneath in spirals of amethysts.
“A most marvelous illusion,” Hiresha said.
“An illusion that pleases you is real.” Tethiel clicked his fang fingers together.
Knowing his crippled fingers made the task of undressing himself difficult, Hiresha helped him. As she had hoped, he also wore another layer of false finery. Stuffing his garments into the same oilskin sack alongside hers felt scandalous.
“A curiosity,” he said, “that undressing yourself is the least intense activity, and undressing another, the most.”
Hiresha could not agree just then, worrying as she was about something more extreme. Her fears proved all too justified when Tethiel scented the Murderfish.
“She comes.” He waved spindle fingers and gleaming cufflinks. Shadows flowed and stretched.
Harpoons took form in the air. They gathered in flocks, in all shapes. A long pole with bronze beak and curving barbs; a stone-tipped arrow with rope bound to the end; a spear of ebony, it tips sharpened to a wicked thorn. The harpoons hovered with their points tracking something in the deep.
Tethiel held the last harpoon like a staff. Its onyx head was carved into a dragon with sharp snout and barbs of frills and spines. He brandished it at the sea, and the host of harpoons dove.
They hissed into the water, and the dark surface whitened to foam. Cords and chains spiraled after the harpoons. Tethiel bound these to weights of stone and anchors of lead.
“She’s changed direction.” Tethiel moved his dragon staff to point to a further span of sea. Lines of froth followed through the water. “She’s running from them. I have her. She believes….”
The sea lit in a starburst of blue. Hiresha at first thought she saw the Murderfish’s blood, but this was too bright. Light oozed outward in jiggling tendrils that illuminated the harpoons and engulfed them.
“Her ink dissolved my casting.” Tethiel spoke in tones of disinterest. He hefted his dragon-headed staff above his head and waited.
He hurled the last harpoon like a lightning bolt. The air recoiled in a blast of thunder. The water exploded in slicing sprays.
Hiresha peered into the sea. She could see nothing beneath the storm-lit surface. Tension rippled over her body in time with the swaying waves. “Did that connect?”
Tethiel shrank, and his silver hair shed and curled into nothing. His eyes reflected violet from a nearby tempest, and his gaze filled her with exquisite pangs.
“It hit,” he said, “but the Murderfish disbelieved it could harm her. Perhaps if Feaster Celaise were here herself…but no, better she be safe. The kraken’s circling toward us now.”
Hiresha sank to her knees. The amethysts in her dress darkened to wisps of shadow.
Tethiel’s eyes dimmed. “I try to craft horrors, but the Murderfish surpasses them all. The best man can do is imitate nature with art. While nature can devour art and man.”
The sea churned beneath them. A wet sucking sound made the enchantress fear the Murderfish gripped the boat.
The Paragon
sprang into the air and skidded backward over the sea. Water sheeted from either side.
The boat pitched to a stop. Its sail caught the wind once more.
Hiresha braced herself, not knowing from which direction the next tentacle would come. The Murderfish had shoved them back south. Hiresha dug her fingernails into her temples, trying to think if any choice remained to them except how they died.
By drowning, tentacle, or knife.
The waves glistened red from the nearby storm. The waters turned choppy.
Tethiel’s face looked bloody as he gazed up at the tempest. “We need to head another way. Unless the Murderfish is afraid of storms.”
“Are men afraid of bosoms?” Emesea touched the rigging.
“Wait.” Hiresha had an idea. She hesitated to say it aloud, but desperation was a superb motivator. “Would the tempest kill us?”
Emesea snaked a rope around her arm then turned to the enchantress. “It’ll change you.”
“Forever?” Hiresha asked.
The expression that wrinkled Emesea’s face was one the enchantress had never seen on her before: uncertainty. Motes of crimson drifted past her bare shoulders.
“My heart, we must turn now.” Tethiel pointed a slender finger to open sea. “I have enough left for one last illusion.”
“Create a decoy. Sail it back north. The Murderfish won’t expect us to voyage into storm.”
Tethiel scratched his chin with a fang. “Maybe we shouldn’t expect us to either.”
“We’ve exhausted the areas of our expertise,” Hiresha said. “We need a new path, and the shore is beyond the storm.”
Emesea laughed and swung the rigging rope around. “That’s the way. I knew you weren’t just a cross-legged tea sniffer.”
Illusion leeched the substance from
The Paragon
, and Hiresha saw herself and the boat swing around and sail on without her. She remained in a shadow of their former vessel. Beneath her, a swordfish stabbed two orange fish out of their school, and the water simmered and discolored around the pinioned creatures.
Even as the air thickened with the dream storm, Hiresha breathed freer. The sea breeze felt like putting on a new skin.
Fish crowded the waves. Thousands of mouths opened; circles with small teeth dipped in and out of the water. They seemed to gulp at the tempest.
The unseen boat shifted beneath Hiresha. The gnarled hide of a terror croc sped by. The serpentine creature wove itself back and forth with mouth open. Bands of fish fled from it, but they could not go far in the crush of life.
Hiresha told herself that this was a good thing.
The Murderfish won’t see us in this bedlam.
“Hold onto your minds,” Emesea said.
26
Storm Gambit
A fever of sky skates circled over the waves. Eels coiled below them. Hiresha spotted the stinger of a fisherman’s bane. The water crackled with a swarm of shrimp. Large shapes moved below, behemoths that pushed away shoals of fish to spout water in musky blasts.
Hiresha never noticed when the boat reappeared. Neither did she much care that her gown of illusion had faded, leaving her in small clothes. She felt tired, so she would sleep. She curled up in the boat, savoring the roughness of the planking against her palms.
Tethiel was shaking her. Hiresha pushed him away and closed her eyes again. Then someone lifted her by the scruff of her neck. Pain burned its way down her back. She cried out. A woman with slanted hair shouted, Emesea.
Emesea had hurt Hiresha, and she could not let that pass. She snarled. She clawed at the other woman.
A punch to Hiresha’s hip spun her around, and Emesea brandished a black-faceted blade. Hiresha knew she was outmatched. She bowed her head.
Her hands caressed the planking. Its texture changed from pitted and scratchy to splinters. The boat burst apart, crushed by a terror croc’s tail. Webbed ridges swept beneath Hiresha. She flipped, feet over head. Her cry burst out in high notes like laughter.
She landed amid the wreckage. Eels flopped around her. They felt like slugs racing over her skin. She didn’t like that. She pushed through broken planks to reach the mast. It tilted and dunked her. Something scaly and cold knocked her. Sharp teeth nibbled her ankle.
She screamed and gurgled. Salt burned its way up her nose. She beat her way back through fins and fish tails to the mast. It tipped her again into a wave. Hiresha clung on.
A hand pulled her away. It was Emesea, the leader. Hiresha followed her into the sea.
Hiresha flopped and flailed. Panic streamed around her in froth and jostling cold bodies. She could not breathe the water like the fish could. She tried. Gulping air that tasted of fire, summer, and sea spray, she plunged.
She swam. The movements were both new and natural. Her legs paddled. Her arms ladled water behind her. She could not remember why she had feared swimming. Bubbles tingled across her belly and flashed in front of her eyes.
Other creatures moved faster. That was a worry. A sardine swam into her face, fins whisking over her lips until she spluttered the fish away.
A terror croc coasted closer. The sinuous menace smashed water into white clouds. Its mouth clamped shut. Its fangs caged a fish broken and leaking blood. It had been the swordfish. About her size.
The terror croc crunched its prey into bleeding chunks. The crocodile’s eye was gold with a vertical chasm. It looked at her.
Hiresha wriggled to the side, fear-sick knowing she could never swim far enough, fast enough.
Emesea pulled her downward. The terror croc’s maw passed overhead. A slipstream tumbled Hiresha upside down and around. A belly of interlocking leather squares streamed above her.
The predator snaked away, and its departing current carried Hiresha beneath a ceiling of fish. Hiresha thought to fight through them for a breath. A mass of sardines turned into a metal prison around her, but it only held her for a few lung-burning seconds.
Emesea towed a floating sack of leather. Hiresha could not say why they needed the oilskin bag, but at least it did not seem to slow the leader.
Hiresha felt someone was missing. She looked behind to see a scarred man. He clawed at the water, trying to follow, but he was slow because of his bad hands and bow legs.
The leader motioned to leave him. Hiresha did so, kicking after Emesea. The water fizzed with red light, darkening into emptiness below. A few green-glowing fish nibbled at their hair.
A tearing sensation built in Hiresha. Nothing had bitten her, but she felt they should not leave Tethiel.
He’s part of our pack.
It seemed wrong to disagree with her leader. She still pulled on Emesea’s leg and paddled back. Hiresha made Tethiel hook his arm around her waist, pulled him after her. He slowed her. She lugged herself forward anyway. She had never felt so strong.
Hiresha knew that she had to swim. To move was to stay alive. To swim was joy.
To swim was terror. The croc serpent looped downward. Its long maw of saw teeth swung forward and back then pointed toward her.
Emesea tugged, and Hiresha followed with Tethiel into the deep.
A fin loomed upward from the darkness, as long as she. Currents battered her from the sway of this new fish’s tail. Rocky plates armored its head. They fit together in a mouth like a jagged beak. Sharks swam after it. They were but scavengers to this monster.
The great platehead swept its tail side to side to meet the terror croc straight on. The terror croc had the greater length and bulk. It still slunk away in a sideways loop.
Hiresha and the others in her pack had stopped. The monsters were in front of them, and worry burned in her like her want of breath. Hiresha went up for air.
She came back down to see the terror croc snap its jaws closed on the flank of the other predator. Translucent armor appeared on the finned giant. One instant, its hide had been bare. The next, glassy slabs tinted the hue of lavender protected it, and the impact of crocodile fangs against them made a pinging din.
This armored giant, this great platehead, snapped open its mouth. Razor jaws cut through lumps of crocodile hide. The sea rumbled with the monster’s pain.
Emesea led the pack in a new direction. If they had been going a specific way, Hiresha did not remember why. Leaving the monsters behind was enough. She went apace with Tethiel. He matched her speed now by cupping both hands together for a rippling stroke through the water. He and the rest of the pack still crawled compared to the tuna flitting by. Spikes ran along the fish’s backbones and bellies leading to their tail fins.
An itching pressure on her back caused Hiresha to look behind. The great platehead followed her, or perhaps the school of tuna. No one in the pack could ever outswim the predator. Hiresha could only hope the numbers of other prey saved her. The great platehead popped open its mouth, and a nearby tuna disappeared.
The school clustered closer, hundreds of silvery bodies slicing through the water in unison. They melded together, scales interlocking into scales, fins linking with fins, until the school was but one colossus. The mammoth tuna now overshadowed the great platehead, and the predator let the school of one swim on its way.
Hiresha felt exposed in her pack of three. Nothing remained to distract the great platehead. Meeting its black-eyed gaze touched Hiresha with mortal chill. The craggy ridges of its mouth stayed shut, while the sharks that escorted it seemed to smile. Hiresha suspected if she was not consumed in one bite, the sharks would eat the scraps.
Emesea pulled her in another direction, toward more finned behemoths. Hiresha’s gut clenched. She did not see why going toward a larger number of sea giants would help, but she trusted her leader.
Shadowy hulks swayed through the water, crying out to each other in echoing moans. The undersides of their knobby fins were pink in the light of the dream storm. Their mouths spread into tunnels that engulfed clouds of shrimp. Throats bulged outward and rippled like shaken sheets. A few shrimp teleported to freedom.
Hiresha’s fright drained away as she swam closer to the whales. Tranquility seeped into her skin like the warmth of the sun on a spring day. Despite the size of the whales, she felt safe, a child swimming among family.
The whales’ aura of peace never diminished even when the great platehead glided below. The predator did not even pause near Hiresha’s pack or the baby whales. Neither did it fight with the terror croc that crossed its path.
Emesea kicked her way above a whale and grasped the mussels on its brow. She motioned Hiresha to do the same. The whale she chose glanced at her paddling closer, a ring of hair around its eye. The creature did not seem much bothered when she and Tethiel clung to its head. The mussel was smooth and sharp on her hand. Her other fingers rested against the roughness of the whale.
Tethiel pawed at the lumpy surface but could not keep a hold. He bled where a barnacle scratched his chest. She guided her pack-mate's arm around her waist. He held to her, and the ridges of his scars brushed against her skin. The press of his arms was a heat of reassurance. She could not remember if she had ever felt such a sense of contentment.
The heave of the whale up and down in the water kept her alert. Many fish her size and smaller accompanied the whales. Redness faded from the sea, and the surface turned into swaying silver.
Whenever the whale lifted itself to spout, Hiresha gasped air amid the rush of whitewater. The night wore on. They traveled further from the dream storm, past reefs, above underwater mountains. Hiresha found it harder and harder to hold her breath as long as the whale.
She took to swimming up to the surface alongside Tethiel for air. They dove back down. Every muscle in her body sang with the strain of catching up to the whale. She gripped it behind its stumpy dorsal fin. Here its back wrinkled in folds. Tethiel latched his arms around her leg. This made her feel peculiar. She could not say why.
After the next stolen breath, she whirred her arms to return to her whale. Her muscles felt they would tear. The whale slipped away from her. She caught hold of the next one. As she clung, a thought seared its way into her consciousness.
What am I doing? Once I was a respected enchantress, and now I’m a whale parasite?
Even more curious, she thought she saw the Lord of the Feast with his arms hugging the tail of the whale ahead of her.
Her whale surfaced, and she scanned the horizons. Starlit sea sprawled in all directions. Dream storms cast halos of color in the surrounding waters. She could not say with any certainty which of the red ones she had come from.
There’s no land in sight.
Hiresha realized her danger. She stayed calm, even when lack of breath once again forced her from her perch. The gulp of air did little to relieve the heaviness of her muscles. She felt as if she had been beaten on her shoulders, back, and limbs. She floundered after the whales. Her vision underwater had darkened. She felt she swam in tar.
She knew the whales had left her behind when the panic struck.
I’m lost at sea and alone. And what happened to our boat?
Her memories were dreamlike.
The behemoths spouted ahead of her. She slapped her arms into the water, pulling herself closer. She wanted to shout for help, but her tongue seemed to have forgotten how to form the word. Her wail sounded tiny amid the waves.
Something round bobbed up beside her. Hiresha gasped, flailing away from it. Then she realized it was the oilskin sack. Emesea touched her shoulder, pointed a direction. Hiresha grabbed the floating bag, and it buoyed her enough that she did not fear she would drown. Tethiel was with them, swimming on his back, spluttering with every wave.
Hiresha had to think miles separated them from any land. She still kicked and swam after Emesea.
I prefer a few hours of exertion, even if it’s hopeless, to immediate drowning.
A speck ahead of her grew to a smudge atop the sea. It looked too small for coastline. Seeing the patch of fuzz still invigorated her. Her legs churned the water. She thought it might be an island.