orphic (adj.) mysterious and entrancing; beyond ordinary understanding

In Irij, when a Kur woman reached the age of sixty-five, she began to prepare for her own death. She sewed the clothes in which she wished to be buried; she knitted gloves for the men she had chosen to be her gravediggers; she selected a place in the town cemetery where she wished to be lain. And for her husband, too, she would perform these rites. This was of the utmost importance; rumours of a Kur xrafstar with a flair for necromancy some ten generations back meant that all Kur matters to do with death were deemed a matter of communal security. Preparing your funeral in advance was the best way to avoid ending up in a mass grave near one of the old internment zones.

It was rare indeed to find yourself performing these rites for your children, but by the time that Bogumiła Szymańska had achieved her sixty-fifth year and began to prepare for her own funeral, she had prepared the funerals of daughter and granddaughter alike. She was glad to see the gloves get some use; she was less glad to see that the men Jaga had appointed as pallbearer and gravedigger had not the decency to live long enough to do their duty. Nor had Jaga the decency to die in a form easily buried – and by god, her little sister had made a butchery of things, which didn't help. Bogna's request for one of her granddaughter's wings had been viewed with much suspicion by the chancellery, and in the end they had burned most of the thing that had been Jaga and put the rest into a pinewood box that could be easily hauled to the Kur cemetery where her xrafstar brethren lay, waiting for her beneath the ground.

Bogna attended alone. She was usually the only member of the Szymańscy family who attended these funerals; the others did not recognise the things that were buried as their daughter and sister and cousin. Indeed, Kinga's adoptive father, Krzysiek Szymański, had returned Bogna's invitation to accompany her burned and defaced with black pen. That was a little dramatic, she thought, for such a minor event: Bogna would just stand on the street outside the cemetery, an umbrella shielding her from the worst of the rain, and watch.

She watched now as the Lover was lowered into a pit in the ground. The graves themselves were unmarked; they would have their names inscribed upon the marble wall of Warriors instead. Wasn't that a greater honour? And after the Lover, the Hierophant; after the Hierophant, the Moon of Kur. Bogna watched the grey-faced Kur labourers drop the coffin into the ground, joining its brother, and cover it up hastily, and thought to herself, in the old days they would have covered it with concrete. They would not have risked anything escaping in the dead of night to wreak undead havoc upon the townspeople.

They had always been a superstitious lot, the Kur.

There had not been enough of the Chariot to bury, nor of the Sun; the Death had been buried elsewhere, as had the Hanged Man. This was a matter of practicality, not of honour. There was no affection here, as there ought to have been in the funeral of a Kur. Their eternal neighbours had not been selected, but chosen out of pragmatism. They had simply found an empty patch of ground.

That was it – the eighteenth generation was dust and bones now. They had done well. Bogna had hardly slept the night before, such fervor had poured out onto the street in a sea of waving flags and a shower of fireworks and sparklers. There had been shouting, and laughter, and singing. Fathers had hoisted children on their shoulders, and mothers had leaned out of their windows to call to their neighbours and say to them, can you believe it? Can you really believe it?

The war was over.

The Keeper of the sacellum, Aubert Abreo, had glimpsed her watching; he came over to her at the railing, removing his hat in respect for the older woman as he inclined his head. He had a burn prominently displayed on his right cheek; she did not ask what had caused. Initiation was a stressful time for everyone. "Mrs Szymańska. I am sorry for your loss."

"What loss? Our family has provided another Warrior." Bogna smiled. Unlike her granddaughters, she was no great beauty, and never had been – she had the same handsome strength to her features as Kinga, but her skin was somehow heavier, her face less crisply defined, her whole body seeming weighed down by long hard living. She wore the plain uniform of a Kur washerwoman: a long dress in drab colours, a shawl worn over her hair, a pin affixed to her lapel to show her status as mother of a Warrior. "We are ever proud to do our duty for Irij."

"Yes." Abreo paused. He was not the most expressive of men; long hours alone tended to erode eloquence. Of his keen intelligence, however, Bogna was certain. "I'm sure Kinga will make you proud anew, as Jaga once did."

"I have faith – Konrad Sauer has always trained them well." Time and again, Bogna had sent him a child and he had returned a soldier; it was not for her to question the system. "But let us not talk of such sombre things, Mr Abreo. How are you keeping?"

He smiled, very slightly, at this abrupt change of tone. Bogumiła Szymańska was a severe woman; it was hard to read her mood, but she rarely seemed to take seriously the things that any reasonable grandmother would. "I am well, thank you, Mrs Syzmanska."

"And the other Champions?"

"Halkias and Tofana are with the Warriors." Tofana – their educational instructor, responsible for imparting eighteen generations of knowledge about the curses. Halkias – the chancellor's maven, advisor on all things xrafstar. What was it like, Dagmara had sometimes wondered aloud, to spend your whole life dedicated to something which was by their nature so utterly destructive and transient transient – to spend your entire existence in the service of the curses without even the simple power they usually accorded their bearer? Such was the fate of the Champions, their predecessors and their predecessors' predecessors. There was always so little information about how they were chosen, Bogda had reminded her, and they were the only ones to know the true identity of the World – they were men apart, these Champions. More human than the Warriors, and yet more unknowable, and certainly not to be trifled with. "Sauer has returned to the training camp to prepare for the next crop of candidates. The cycle begins anew."

The old woman smiled. "And all is well?"

"All is well."

"So then," Bogna said, quite thoughtfully, in a tone that would remind anyone of her granddaughters, "why do you look so scared, Mr Abreo?"

Toska Zhuk had been working the ports of Opona for going on thirty years; she had been running the route from Irij to New Asia for longer than anyone else could remember, no matter how bad the war got; she was rarely missed from the docks for longer than a day, working through illness and exhaustion alike; she knew the winds in the port like another might know where to look for sunrise from their own bedroom window.

So when Orfeas Halkias had asked for someone willing for a journey through the sea of monsters to the island full of demons on the other side of the Schreave channel… there really hadn't been a second option available.

"Easy money," she had told Ishkur Nirari earlier that morning, as she wound up the ropes in preparation for her cargo's arrival and the young dockhand moved crates of tea from her loyal vessel, the Vernost. "Easy money for a short day of work."

"And the monsters?"

She had flicked him on the head. "That's not a nice way to talk about your sister and her friends, moron."

Toska had spotted Ishkur's sister easily: they had the same golden skin, the same inky hair, the same eyes like gold. She was shorter than her brother, somehow softer, although Toska had imagined a lifetime in military training would be harsher than an existence by the sea. And Inanna was quiet, not like chatty Ishkur at all. She couldn't identify which of them might have been Kaapo's son – if he bore any resemblance to his father, then he could not be among this number. They were all too narrow and dark-haired, wiry things with dark eyes and worried brows. She couldn't imagine any legitimate Hämäläinen looking like that; she did not think that the son of which Kaapo had been so proud was here at all. Then again, she had been told to expect eleven and they had arrived with eight; perhaps there was a separate contingent travelling elsewhere.

In any case, it was not Toska's place to ask. It was Toska's place to keep a hand on the wheel and watch the water.

So watch the water she did.

They were cutting through the fog at a fast clip now, the mist enclosing them; they were in the grip of some enormous grey glove. The water was grey as well, a deep slate colour – not at all like its greener tone nearer to shore. And it was still, very still, without even the suggestion of tidal movement beneath. That was unnerving for Toska, though she could tell that her passengers were just glad to have a smooth journey.

There was wind. How could there be no waves?

People had attempted to reach Illéa before – Irij and Kur and Warrior alike. Sometimes they went missing; sometimes their bodies washed up weeks after their departure, mauled nearly beyond identification; sometimes they found bits of their boats floating in the channel, just pieces of wood and cloth alive on the waves. The Warriors that had attempted usually fared little better, though of course there were whispers that the Chariot in the last generation had managed to use his ability to land on the shore of Illéa and disappear almost as soon as he had arrived. Toska thought it likely they were just that: whispers. What good was a rumour? The most important things in life were those which were tenable – tenable and tangible and real. Real accomplishments – like reaching Illéa herself.

Now, wouldn't that be an achievement?

The Warriors milling about on deck looked as comfortable as Toska felt, which wasn't very. She didn't know their names – they were cargo – but she could not help but feel apprehensive. What few run-ins she had previously had with past Warriors had been entirely different: they had been confident, and personable, and astute. They had been heroic, in a sense; her crew had all been utterly in awe of their presence.

These looked like… she wasn't sure. Something about the look in their eyes reminded her of sailors after a shipwreck.

Inanna Nirari had not moved from the edge of the ship; was she ignorant of the eyes upon her? The others were watching her from the corner of their eyes as though they expected her to jump. The rest of the Warriors were milling about, some sitting in tight knots near the deckhouse and speaking quietly, some examining the ropes or the buoyancy aid with an expression that suggested they were striving to do anything but entertain their own thoughts.

She paused. There was a ripple in the water there, starboard; Orfeas Halkias was watching it fixedly, just as Toska Zhuk was. The teenagers wouldn't have noticed – it was just water. But Halkias turned to look at Toska, and Toska nodded, and she reached for the harpoon they kept under the wheel column. Her mother and grandfather had kept it before her; she couldn't remember them ever finding use for it. It had always just sat here; Toska remembered oiling the cannon as a child to keep it freshly functional, when she could be trusted with none of the more important work on board.

Could you harpoon a monster? Toska wouldn't have been averse to finding out.

The ripple was extending now – it might have been comfortable, this small suggestion that the water was moving as water ought. But the rest of the ocean was remaining flat and still, reflecting the fog around it as perfectly as a mirror. It was only a single stripe of moving, writhing water, moving closer and closer to the boat by the second. This gently awful stirring seemed to speak of some hidden soul beneath…

Orfeas Halkias had broken from the railing; he emerged into the berth to speak quietly to Toska as she stared resolutely through the glass at where the horizon ought to have been. Instead – more fog. They were moving at a steady fifteen knots or so; could they strive for more? Halkias said, quietly, "you have weapons on board?"

"Rifle, shotgun, harpoon."

"Flare?"

"I wouldn't advise using it."

She jerked her head towards the cabinet where her crew kept their guns – an unfortunate requirement when you were ferrying supplies to the front-line of a territorial war. Toska had never lost a fight, or a crewmember. She would have liked to keep up that streak for as long as possible.

Halkias was a thin man with an immaculately groomed moustache and a suit which would have cost the better part of a year's wages on the docks; Toska half-expected him to buckle under the weight of the shotgun, but he racked it with the ease of an expert and said, "I might have to double your pay after all."

"Triple it," Toska said shortly, "and I expect compensation for damages..."

And there it was: the thing that had been a ripple was now a wave, and within that wave was a dark shape. The thing that had been a dark shape was sharpening, its features becoming more apparent, as it rose up alongside the ship, water falling from its enormous shape like some kind of immense curtain.

From the other side of the ship, there was abruptly an enormous crash – a collision from something hidden beneath the water. The whole boat tilted violently to starboard, lifting two of the younger Warriors off their feet entirely, and the thing that had been rising from the water seemed to rumble and shudder with anticipation. It had a textured, bubbled dark skin, like burned plastic, and twin jaws that opened now as nothing more or less than enormous shears, narrow and sharp. It could not reach them – it was still too low in the water – but it was there, and Toska would have preferred that it was not. On the other side, another enormous crash and the whole ship seemed to buckle, wooden floorboards shrieking their dissent as the Warriors on the deck shouted and rushed for the relative safety of the cabin's shadow.

They were hemmed in.

Toska said, narrowly, "I don't suppose we could outrun them?" The Vernost was a quick little boat, and quicker again with such light cargo; ten people on board hardly amounted to even a skeleton crew. Fully loaded, she had managed something near twenty knots once, on a desperate rescue gallop to recover seamen from a drowning ocean liner off Swendway. Maybe she could beat that now.

But how fast could monsters move?

These were only shadows of druj, and yet she found her heart in her throat even as she reached for her radio – could she get a signal out? What use would help be?

Halkias said, "just keep it steady."

Toska said, "oh, thank you, that hadn't occurred to me."

The sky felt like it was closing in on top of them as Halkias rushed back out onto the deck, and began to shout commands at the Warriors. Again, Toska was struck by their youth: the youngest looked like she had only just entered her teens, the oldest like he had only just left them. Nonetheless, they seemed to find some comfort in being issued orders, though several were caught, speechless, staring at the thing rushing alongside them as though it had been pulled from their nightmares.

And now that thing dove back beneath the water, leaving those same long ripples again, and for a moment the water was flat; Toska reached for the harpoon, and chased Halkias out onto the deck. It was brisk, but not especially cold; the fog was creeping in, tighter and tighter, choking out any glimpse of the sky or the sun, but it was nonetheless reasonably bright for late afternoon. She moved to the cannon mounted on the bow, heedless of whatever the Warriors were doing, and examined briefly the old contraption before rotating the cover plate and breaking open the breechblock to load the harpoon inside. Her grandfather had always told her the greatest hunters aimed for the eyes – did druj have eyes?

She pulled back the handle to cock the firing pin. She wanted to be ready.

"Captain Zhuk!" She didn't have the heart to tell him that she wasn't a captain, so she kept her mouth shut as she turned to address the young lad who had run up behind her. He was lanky and lean, with curling dark hair and intelligent eyes – the Chariot. "What can I do?"

"Can you shoot?" On his nod, she grinned almost feverishly. "There's a rifle in the deckhouse with your name on it..."

Some of the Warriors were emerging now from the berthings beneath deck, looking slightly dazed; Halkias was throwing words their way as well, though Toska wasn't sure what he was hoping for. The druj had hidden themselves anew, disappeared beneath the water, leaving those same long ripples in their wake as they churned ahead of the Vernost.

Maybe they were gone?

She knew as soon as she had thought it that she ought not have; it was a jinx, a bad omen. The storm had not passed. Now, ahead of them, the water split again and some new creature rose from it – was this a creature? She could not have ever imagined something so enormous. It rose to three times the size of the boat, and it continued rising. It was tall and long and thin and spiked; its scaled back stretched far into the distance as it reared, slowly. It rose, and rose, higher than any sail Toska had ever glimpsed, thin as a tower, like an obelisk was rising before them – and then something like wings or fans snapped out from either side, like a peacock's tail feathers, so that now it was tall and wide and it took up the whole of the horizon….

The water that flowed from its back as it rose was enough to swamp the deck; the Warriors and Toska rushed back. Ahead of her, one of the smallest Warriors had slipped, a petite girl with straight dark hair; Toska grabbed her by the shirt collar and put her back on her feet. Her own voice was no longer audible to her; she was sure that she was shouting, but the sound that this monster was making went bone-deep until it was all that she could think about or perceive.

They were rammed from behind again. Inanna Nirari was the only one with steady footing as the entire ship lurched; she grabbed the hand of the boy next to her to keep him from falling. The dark-skinned boy and the short girl with the gap in her tooth were holding onto each other like they thought the boat would be split into two. Their bags were sliding towards the edge of the boat; the smallest Warrior lunged for them, and caught a few of them by their strap. Halkias shouted, "I'm afraid the guns were wishful thinking!"

"I do wish!" Toska shouted back.

A harpoon wouldn't do much. She couldn't see eyes. It may as well have been formed of rock, this animal that was not an animal. She could not see a maw – or maybe that was its maw, the great black hole now stretching wide in its centre, inky black and somehow dripping black mucus like an animal and saliva.

She could try harpooning it there, she supposed.

They weren't far now. Any second now, they would have their first glimpse of Illéa – their first glimpse, if not for this damned fog. They were close. They could make it.

They could make it.

Maybe.

There was something snake-like moving beside them, on the port side, and then, very abruptly, the shear-like jaws of their first companion rose anew and bit deep into the railings and the deck, splintering wood and bending metal and ripping rope. Halkias shot it; the buckshot splayed across its face, penetrated deep, and the thing only shrieked and bit again, thrashing, dragging the boat down with it as it dropped further back into the water. It was writhing its head in a manner a dog did, when it was trying to wring the neck of a rabbit. It was an enormous serpent, and it had the Vernost, and they were being pulled under.

And even if they weren't being pulled under, they were being pulled forward, towards that enormous thing that was not made of stone.

And even if they weren't being pulled forward, they were being rammed down, by the invisible thing on their port side.

God, Toska should have asked for more money.

The Chariot raised his rifle, and sighted, very briefly, his barrel scanning the length of the great shape before them, even as the whole ship shuddered and shook. He squeezed the trigger, and… nothing happened. Toska wasn't even sure it had penetrated the great stone thing before them; maybe it had bounced off.

Halkias had reloaded and fired again; the serpent beneath their ship shrieked and writhed and fell back briefly. For a second, the ship stilled, and rebalanced upon the water; Inanna Nirari gasped a breath of relief, still clutching to the boy who had fallen, one arm tight around his chest; the Chariot fell back against the cabin, sucking in a breath, exchanging a nervous look with the youngest member of the Warriors; the Hanged Man and the Death were still holding hands, clinging to each other like they were afraid if they let go one of them would slip into the water and into the maw of these awful creatures.

All was still. For a single moment, all was still.

Then –

The serpent lunged again. It bit down on the bow of the boat; the whole ship lifted up, the stern lifting entirely from the water. Toska was thrown off her feet; she lunged for the nearest railing, clinging to it with all her might. The metal tore at her fingers, and yet she persevered, gritting her teeth tightly. The Warrior nearest to her had not been so lucky; Toska reached for her, and felt her hand slip past, fingers ghosting across palm as she desperately grasped for salvation.

And then she was gone, and falling, and the little Warrior pinned in place by the Chariot could only scream, "Hyacinth!"

Hyacinth was screaming as well. She hit her head – hard – on the railing as she fell, and tumbled across the floorboards towards the open mouth of the serpent in the water below. She was screaming, and the little Warrior was screaming as well, and it was all just…

And with those screams, there was an unmistakeable shudder in the air, a rippling of something that was not wind, the unmistakeable impression that there was something awful popping into being in the spaces between oxygen and nitrogen. The whole world seemed, for a split second, to distort and twist; Toska's head pounded, like all the air in the world had been abruptly sucked away and she could feel the very molecules of her flesh vibrating. The serpent was distorting and twisting as well, writhing and shaking. This was no longer the motion of a hunter intent on snapping necks – this was a monster in pain, this was a creature desperate to get away.

It released, and hauled back into the water, still shaking; Hyacinth fell past it, and disappeared into the murky darkness of the water. The smallest Warrior screamed again. The boat crashed back onto a level, and Toska sprinted for the harpoon, seizing it and spinning it. The serpent had sunk back under the water, but the enormous stone thing was still there, with that strange dripping crevice that approximated mouth, and the only thing she could do was yank back the firing pin and fire the harpoon straight down what she hoped was a throat.

The harpoon disappeared, noiselessly.

This druj was going to devour the boat.

Maybe they could turn the boat. Maybe the druj were just protecting their territory. Maybe if they retreated towards Irij…

Halkias had kicked another harpoon her way, and then another. She seized one, and loaded it again; she fired instantly, aiming for where an eye ought to have been. She didn't have to look closely to know this had been pointless; the tip had shattered on impact, and the bolt had fallen harmlessly into the water. One more for good luck?

And somewhere beneath the grey-slate surface of the water, there was an enormously flash of light - bright white, bleach white, brighter than anything Toska had ever glimpsed. It was like staring directly into the sun; she could only cringe in her own elbow, her eyes squeezed shut. Now she was sensing the light more than seeing it; when she had some idea that it had dissipated, she glanced upwards and saw... quite impossibly... that the stone thing before them had opened what might have been an eye in the centre of its stem. It was another black hole, dripping black mucus, but there was something there, some movement, that made Toska think, if this was a fight, I'd stab there first.

So she fired her last harpoon.

Toska didn't wait to see if it fell. She just ran for the helm. If it did fall, they didn't want it to fall on them. They wanted to be around, around and through and at the shore of Illéa...

"Turn the boat around!"

Toska turned. "What?"

There – there, in front of them – it was Illéa. The mists and fog were parting. For the first time, in two hundred years – longer – they were here, they could see it. They were in sight of Illéa. They were nearly there.

So close. So close!

Halkias shook his head. "Turn the boat around!"

"We're close enough..."

"Not quite," Halkias said, "not we."

And he turned and, quite casually, kicked the nearest Warrior into the water.

"What the fuck are you…?"

Toska needn't have asked. The dark-skinned Warrior had fallen, quite soundlessly, into the silent water; the Chariot had shouted his name, and gone after him, and now the Hanged Man, without a single moment of hesitation, had dived in after them both, grabbing her bag as she did so. Four in the water. Four in this water, so who was to say who was still alive?

"Turn us!" Halkias shouted again, and Toska ran for the deckhouse. It seemed like her best course of action; the alternative might have been joining those kids in the water.

There was enough space to pivot; they weren't so close to the druj before them that they would be pulled in after it. On the deck, the dark-haired boy, Inanna Nirari's friend, was shouting something at Halkias; Toska supposed the smallest Warrior must have gone into the water as well, for she could see no sign of her. Inanna was pressed against the railing, staring at her own reflection in the water and then, with only a single moment of consideration, threw herself over the railing and her friend shortly followed.

What had been ten people and gear was now two people; Toska grasped the tiller tightly and twisted, with all her strength. She wasn't interested in dying today. This was close enough – this was enough of a story to last her a lifetime. No one really cared about Illéa these days anyway.

The Vernost was a good ship; she responded quickly, as though she was also desperate to escape this whole situation. The water was no longer still; the ship churned it into a frothy wake behind them, as they left that strange stone thing reaching out of the sky and sped back into the mist.

Behind them, the Warriors had sunk into the water. Gone.

As the chancellor's maven staggered to the threshold of the deckhouse, Toska said, not letting her eyes stray from the mist around them, "what are they, bait?"

"Not at all," Halkias replied darkly. "They're a landing party."