And when laughter died, when the night air hung still, he stood upon the deck.
Sheraptus in body. Restored and whole and unbroken.
His warriors stopped midrow, looking up at the creature brimming with life. They watched him with awe as he stepped over Xhai, walked between his warriors to the prow of the ship.
He stared out over the black shapes of his fleet cutting through the waves, at the warriors he commanded. All for the death of the demons. All for the glory of what walked in the sky.
All for him.
“Go,” he commanded. “We go to Jaga. We go for glory and for death. The demons await us.”
He knew this.
Because he had to kill them.
And because whatever had left the stone, whatever was inside him, knew it.
And wanted to help.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was a rare and unfortunate occasion, Lenk thought, that he could not enjoy food. It always seemed like it had been some time since he had eaten, let alone anything freshly-cooked. But he chewed the skewered fish, plucked from the sky like fruit from a tree, without much joy.
It was, after all, difficult to enjoy a meal that had been handed to him by a gang of bipedal reptiles that had been eager to kill him just moments ago. Even if said reptiles now clustered in small campfires about the base of the stone stairs, even if they had offered him food, they continued to stare at him warily, their weapons never far from their hands.
Their leader was no less unnerving and twice as frustrating. Shortly after revealing his affiliation with the organization that had, over the course of weeks, led him to this very island, Mahalar had disappeared without a word. His green-skinned brethren had simply shrugged and said “Mahalar knows,” as though this were all perfectly normal. Perhaps it was for half-rotted lizardmen who spat dust with each word.
But Lenk could have gotten beyond all that. Lenk could have enjoyed his fish. Lenk could have celebrated a warm meal, the fact that he was no longer in immediate danger of decapitation, and the memory of scents of sweat and sand from the chasm.
And he would have.
If not for the statues.
He couldn’t explain it, the feeling he got as he looked across the shattered and broken women. They were but stone, ancient and decrepit and crumbling. But they hated him. They loathed him with a fury clenched in that smile, hidden behind those eyes, held within those outstretched, benevolent palms. The fish knew. That was why they gave her a wide berth when they swam.
He had just begun to turn, content to follow their example, when he heard the sound of grinding. He looked up and saw stone eyes rolling in stone sockets. From high above, and in the rubble where her head lay fragmented, she turned her eyes upon him.
The grinding became a groan, ancient granite dust falling from her shoulders as her many heads turned toward him. And the groaning became cracking, and the cracking became thunder as her many stone mouths opened and spoke in one old, hateful stone voice.
“I gave you a chance. I let you run. Not this time.”
He blinked.
The statues were once again mere stone. No moving eyes, no moving lips, no voices. He held up the half-eaten fish and scrutinized it carefully.
“It is not poisoned.”
The words came with the stench of burning dust. He turned, saw the creature wrapped in the dirty cloak standing before him.
“What you saw was not a hallucination.”
Mahalar inclined his head. Amber eyes, dull and glassy, stared out from the shadows of his cowl.
“She remembers you.”
Lenk nearly choked on his fish.
“You saw. .”
Mahalar’s eyes drifted up toward one of the statues of Ulbecetonth. A cloud of dust came out with his sigh. Beneath him, tiny fingers of sand rose up to seize the motes of dust leaving on his breath, to take them down into the sand of the ring like precious things.
“I have lived a long time,” he said, noting Lenk’s gaze drifting to the ground. “The earth and I have bled together and it no longer remembers a time without me. Or her. We have both been here.
“Live with someone a long time,” he muttered, “and you begin to notice things. The wrinkles that appear when she smiles, the way her laugh is slightly annoying. I have lived with the Kraken Queen a very long time. I have heard her screaming. I have felt her scratching at the roof of hell. I hear her weeping. I know her laughter. I cannot stop from hearing when she cries out for her children.
“These days, she screams more often.” He turned back to Lenk. “Two days ago, she started screaming. She hasn’t stopped.” He sighed deeply. “But you know that, don’t you? You can’t hear it, but you’ve seen it. You know what’s happening in the chasm.” His eyes flashed. “You know she’s coming back, as do I. You remember her.”
There was a flash of movement, motes of dust in the dying light. Mahalar stood mere hairs’ breadths away from Lenk, eyes boring into the young man.
“And I remember you.”
Lenk met his stare for as long as he could bear. While the creature was old, older than the dust that came from his mouth on each breath, old enough to have his skin flaking into powder, somehow his gaze was older, more unpleasant to look at than even his rotting body. His eyes had seen too much, knew too much, and even the tiniest scrap of what they shared in the instant they met Lenk’s eyes was too much.
There was recognition there. Not for Lenk, but for what Lenk was. Beyond whatever Kataria had seen, beyond whatever he had seen in himself, Mahalar saw. Every drop of blood that had stained him, every hateful thought that had ever been muttered inside his head, every chill that had coursed through his body, Mahalar saw.
Mahalar knew.
And Lenk couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. He turned on his heel, suddenly preferring the living, screaming statues.
“Think before you walk away from me,” Mahalar said, toneless. “Think of the weight you’ll walk with. Think of how many chances you’ll have to ask.”
He paused. He thought. He sighed.
“If I do ask,” Lenk replied, “you have to promise me something.”
“That being?”
“You have to tell me, straightforward, without any cryptic, riddle-speaking, I’m-old-and-oh-so-mysterious-so-I-get-to-not-make-sense garbage.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Do we have a deal?”
Mahalar stared straight ahead, as if in deep thought as to whether he was willing to give up that rare joy. In the end, he bowed his head in acquiescence.
“And. .” Lenk began.
He glanced over Mahalar, to the distant firepits, to the sole flash of pale skin amidst a sea of green. Kataria sat amidst the Shen as though she had always belonged there, laughing at some joke they obviously didn’t share, looking up and flashing a broad, bare-canined smile at him.
“This stays between us,” the young man finished, “whatever it is you tell me, you tell no one else.”
“And what is it you wish to know?”
“You said you remembered me.”
“I did.”
“Does that mean you know. .” He choked on the words, eventually coughed them up. “What I am?”
“I do.”
He stared at the elder Shen for a moment. “Well?”
Mahalar slowly turned his gaze upward. He raised a hand, stretched out a finger to a relatively intact statue of Ulbecetonth. The digit straightened with a sickening popping sound, a noticeable chunk of flesh sloughing off. It tumbled from his fingers, hit the ground, and became dust upon dust.