Lenk nodded. He recalled the vast tunnel from which he and Kataria had emerged, brimming with inky black water, stretching into a dark void.
“Those dark places run beneath the mountain. The water there remembers nothing but darkness. . and her. It drowns. It kills. This water. .” He stroked the liquid tendrils, which caressed his hand adoringly. “This water touches no ground. It stays between heaven and earth.”
He drew in a breath and let it out in a cloud of dust that settled upon the water. The liquid shrank from it, wary of something earthen.
“The blood of the Sea Mother,” Mahalar said. “Too pure for mortals.”
“So, that makes you. . what?” Lenk asked.
“Very, very old.”
A sneer came over Mahalar’s face. He clenched his fist so hard the exposed bones cracked with the effort. The water trembled as though scolded and slid away from his hand.
“She chose this as her seat, to defy the Sea Mother. And we chose it as her prison for the same reason. This water remembers her. It remembers what she did.”
He extended his fingers to the water once more. They obliged, warily, reaching up to touch the exposed bone claws of his worn tips.
“They called us slaves from this water. Us, the children of the Sea Mother. And when we no longer called them masters, we sent them back to it. It remembers them, when they did not look like the demons they are now. It remembers them when they were beautiful and wicked. It remembers the stones we tied to their feet when we hurled them in and sent them into the water.”
He sighed wearily, closing his dull, amber eyes.
“It remembers when they rose up again.”
“As the Abysmyths,” Lenk muttered.
“We called them ‘enemy.’ As did the mortal armies. And we fought them together.”
“I’ve heard it said that memory is all that really kills a demon.”
“Memory shapes everything. The sky and sea of Jaga no longer remember what it means to be separate.” He swept a hand to the fish swimming through the night sky overhead. “The land no longer remembers my name, I have been around so long. But water remembers everything. .”
He tapped a slender bone claw against the surface. A ripple echoed across the water, tearing the reflections of themselves and of the dancing stars into pieces and swallowing them whole.
When all light was gone, all that remained was something vast and black, something deep and dreadful.
A hole.
A hole stretching into infinite void beneath the water.
“How. .” he began, staring down over the edge, “how deep does it go?”
“All the way to hell,” Mahalar replied casually.
It was difficult to tell if the elder Shen was being cryptic or literal. Lenk decided he didn’t want to know.
The young man leaned over farther, as if to see if there were something that would tell him. Some trace of light not yet swallowed, some fragment of reflection to tell him that this was still water. He found nothing.
Or rather, he saw nothing.
From the void, from the water, smothered by void, muffled by liquid, he could hear it. It was something soft, something trembling, something too quiet and too pure and too old to know what language was or what words were or anything beyond a simple, mournful melody.
A song. Just for him.
It pained him to hear it. He could feel it, in his skull and in his blood and seeping into his shoulder. He winced, touching a hand to the throbbing mess of flesh.
“Ask it to help you.”
Lenk turned to the elder Shen who stared at him with the same patient intent one watches a corpse to see if they’re really dead.
“Call out to it,” the lizardman said.
“I don’t know-”
“You do,” Mahalar insisted. “I’ve seen it. Back when they walked with us, against the demons. They talked to it in the darkness, they cried out to it when the blood was so thick they could barely speak for fear of choking on it.”
The elder Shen lowered his gaze, unblinking.
“And it answered them. Always.”
“It,” Lenk said quietly, “is not that simple.”
“Can you call it?”
“Do you know what it feels like?”
“I asked-”
“And so did I,” Lenk said. “Do you know what it feels like?”
“I do not.”
“I guess you wouldn’t. Do you want to know?”
“I do not.”
Lenk stared at him for a moment before looking back into the water. “It’s like. . an itch.” He shook his head. “No, that’s stupid. Not like an itch. It’s like. .” He chuckled a little, incredulous of himself. “Not like anything, actually. It just. . is. You know?”
He looked to the elder Shen and nodded. The elder Shen did not nod back.
“And what it is, is constant. It’s. . always there. Always. Even when it’s silent, it’s there. It’s watching you. It’s listening to you. It’s tensing. It’s getting ready. When it first started happening, I guess I just felt it was. . stress, I don’t know. Whatever it is that goes on inside people that makes them hate themselves.”
“But?”
“But then it. . started saying things. It starts talking, even when it isn’t talking. It wants things, it needs things, and if you ignore it, it. .” He drew in a sharp breath, held it. “It doesn’t like that. And it keeps talking. And it keeps saying things. It wants you to do things and it wants you to kill things and it wants you to. . to hurt.
“So you start talking back, just so you think you aren’t insane for a few moments. And then it keeps insisting and you bargain with it and you beg it and you agree with it and it keeps talking until you just can’t. .” He bit his lower lip until it bled. “You need it to stop. You need it to be quiet. So you do what it wants.”
His entire body shook as he released his breath, as he sputtered a few droplets of blood onto his stomach. A tension he wasn’t sure was even there released itself. A cold hand took itself off his shoulder.
“You kill for it.”
He eased himself onto his elbows, onto his back and lay there, trying too hard to forget he could still remember what the voice still sounded like.
“And then?” Mahalar asked.
“And then what?”
“How does it feel?”
“For a moment, it feels right.”
“And then?”
“And then. . it starts talking again.”
Once the words had all been spoken and spent, Lenk was a little surprised at how easily they had come. He imagined it would all be more painful. He had always feared that, upon hearing him speak so candidly about murder and bloodshed and voices in his head, he would be met with horror.
Somehow, Mahalar’s stare, alight with eager curiosity, was worse.
“If you called to it-” the elder Shen began.
“You’re not listening,” Lenk interrupted.
“I am. I hear you now as I heard them then. I heard them weep and I heard them cry out. But they still killed the demons like nothing else could. Their suffering still prevented more from happening. The netherlings come to free Ulbecetonth and use her for their own purposes. They aren’t the first. They won’t be the last unless you call out to it and kill her.”
“So what? Why can’t we leave Ulbecetonth in wherever you left her?”
“Because then we still have to guard her. We still have to tell the stories. We have to hand our children hatchets as soon as they can walk and teach them how to kill before they can speak.”
“So it’s all for your people,” Lenk chuckled. “And here I thought you were some benevolent, wise old fart who just wanted to make the world a better place.”
“I don’t care about the world. I’ve been on it long enough to have grown bored with the novelty of it, human,” Mahalar growled, dust exuding from his mouth. “I care about my people. That’s why I want to save them.”
“If you wanted that, you wouldn’t be standing by and sending them to go die tomorrow.”