Beneath Ceaseless Skies #102 Read online

  “Not all progress can be bloodless,” I said, “and the choice is not between their continued existence or their death, but rather the end of the world by the Out or its flawed saving by the Mapmaker.”

  “She saves it for Her and Hers, none others. Her salvation is another’s desolation. She preserves a world by ending its inhabitants, and you and your brethren fools call the wasteland that She leaves behind saved.”

  “Safety in sterility,” I said. A line of Out between us, like a burrowing worm. No man, no problem, as a once world unificationist had said. No dreams, no damage. “The Out no longer advances into those lands, even if the inhabitants had to be sacrificed to stay it. Better five live long and free than a million miserable and doomed.”

  “All men must eventually die,” Zursee said. “But all have a right to live first.”

  “The Mapmaker gives that right to those yet unborn, those who will never be born if the Out devours us all.”

  “And the cost is all who live save Her chosen,” said he.

  It hit me that I was alone upon this ship, and that this man before me, newfound hatreds etched deep in the lines of his face, had say over my life and death. The door’s breaking had been provocation with a purpose. This conversation had been that, pushed near to the point of insanity.

  “I apologize,” I said. “This grew more heated than I intended, and we should not let such metapolitics cut between us.”

  He nodded, perhaps still hoping to please his guest, but I doubted the suspicion in his gaze would ever depart. Still, at long last, we two turned to the meal before us, and I saw an entire fish delicately slashed to chunks, skin still clinging; some multi-limbed monstrosity with a tentacled head and rudimentary wings; and what looked like broken rocks swimming in a butter sea. Fearing the last the least, I popped one whole into my mouth.

  This was not the proper way to eat them, as it turned out. Zursee guffawed, our disagreement forgotten, and Jani, horrified, showed me the proper method of cracking open the shells and eating the tongue-like flesh within. Consumed in this fashion, they—Austern, as I was bid call them—were acceptable fair.

  Despite that jocundity, the rest of conversation felt composed of ideas skirted.

  * * *

  After the meal, one of the servants led us back towards our quarters via the open top deck. The night air hummed and buzzed with the sounds of our Placement Stones, relics from the long-ended age before the Out, a last ditch attempt made by those who’d unleashed such ruin to save the world.

  We weren’t in the thick of the Out, but we were probing its edges, and the Stones fought their eternal war. They would lose, one day. Each and every Placement Stone was winding down, no matter how slowly. Unless the Mapmaker intervened, the last would fail, centuries hence, and the Out would become all. Until that day, though, the edges of the Stones’ boundaries, a scant dozen feet from the rails in our case, glimmered in the night.

  “Cold,” our guide said to me, maybe the one word of my language he knew. I nodded; maybe I even liked the fellow. Behind us, a wave crashed against the Stones’ boundary, the water sizzling and shrieking at the contact. None of the Kriegsflotte reacted. They were, somehow, used to this. In the night, I knew that demons, corporeal manifestations of the Out, swam all around. Only with these treacherous Kriegsflotte or in Jani’s care could I navigate such regions.

  We passed below the decks, and our guide left us at our door. As soon as we were inside, Jani said, “You’ve doomed us.”

  “Nothing like that,” I told him. “Just stood up to them.” I collapsed on the hard bed, the buzz of the wine spreading with the impact, writhing and magnifying into a tide of drink-sodden tiredness.

  “Even worse,” Jani said, his eyes rich with terror and his panicked, too-visible spirit. “You put us among these heretics for a journey of weeks, and now our quest is to end because of it.”

  “We shan’t be with them for weeks. Sailing all the way to their capital would take us far past the Mapmaker’s domain, if what you’ve said of its location’s true. At the closest point, and I’ll leave the judging to you, we’ll kill the crew and finish the journey in one of their lifeboats.” Wanting to quench his continued fear before giving into my exhaustion, I added, yawning, “Worry not. None of them will be able to stand before me when the time comes.”

  “The time will never come,” Jani said. “If you don’t listen to me, you’ll die tonight.”

  The words reached me only after crossing great mental vistas.

  “You’re tired because you, like all on this ship, were drugged. Sleep is regulated and watched here, for it is then that you are most vulnerable to the thought-invading reach of the Out. The captain will come for your dreams and wander them, searching for creatures demonic. Or,” he said, and paused, “for those plotting their little treasons, their planned liaisons with the Mapmaker and their planned massacres of his very ship, crew, and person.”

  Even in the face of such words, sleep advanced on me, inexorable, and I slipped towards its warm chains.

  “That is how the Kriegsflotte survive in these waters. I can guard your dreams,” I heard him say at the end. “But only if you’ll let me.”

  And so Jani came into my mind.

  The resulting sleep felt more hunt than rest. As I lay, with his fingers upon my brow, probing my depths and keeping me safe, I hid my secrets, those dark dreams and deeds that all possess. I feared—as all sinners do—that some moment of repulsion, of terror unmaskable, would accompany his knowledge of my soul. No such shift ever came.

  When I woke next, it was he who dragged me forth from slumber, and stark terror rode his face. “Those above are dreaming of something,” he said. “And it’s coming.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said, mouth dry as salted sand. “The captain would know.”

  “I thought he would act,” Jani said. “But they’ve been with the demon for hours now, and he does nothing.”

  I rolled off my bed and reached for blade and garb, knowing we couldn’t warn the captain without him realizing Jani’s nature and, with it, his relationship to the Mapmaker.

  And so it was that we found ourselves in the farthest of the crew’s sleeping areas, walking past slumbering rows unimpeded. “That one,” Jani said, “and then that. There, and him. Here, as well.” To each, I administered my one cure for sedition. Tracing the Out in the air, I, Scholar-Practitioner, slipped my blade, ephemeral, past flesh and veins and into the heart, slashing through their dreams with my steel.

  * * *

  I learned the full story of the night’s events, as seen by crew and captain, during my morning meal with Zursee. “A demon came aboard in the night,” he said. “We didn’t see it until it was far too late.” He looked haggard, and it occurred to me that, as he spent the night prowling dreams, he must get most of his sleep in the early parts of the day. Light invaded our discussion from broad windows. In this sliver of world, day began and ended early.

  Into that atmosphere, a messenger entered, countenance and tone composed of naught but terror, and said: “Ein Mann schläft.”

  “A man sleeps,” Jani said as the captain rose, grabbing for one of the relics on the wall. I followed as he ran for the deck, hand on my blade.

  By the time we reached the scene, two of the sleeper’s fellows had already attacked with clubs. Two blows into their struggle, the inimical dreamer lay unconscious and weeping blood from inconsolable injuries. Then, at last, the men looked to their captain for guidance.

  “The demon will never leave him,” Zursee said. “Not if he sleeps in the day. Throw him over the side.”

  The splash was lost amidst the waves, but still Zursee watched, relic in hand, for long moments. At long last, he turned away and went below, leaving behind instructions to be woken if anything untoward occurred.

  He’d barely cleared the deck when the first call was heard over the waves. “Ein Vogel,” one sailor suggested; a bird, Jani translated for me, but none truly believed
those words. The mate talked briefly with two of his fellow officers, clearly debating whether to summon the captain and deciding to hold off unless something more immediately threatening happened. All the same, a half-dozen of the Kriegsflotte, relic-armed one and all, assembled at the ship’s rear to scan the seas, and we all knew that we were in some foul beast’s sight.

  The sound came again, sharp and high. This time, a low rumble followed it like thunder lagging lightening. The mate began to yell out commands. As men scrambled to obey him, their panic plain, he sent the nearest running for the captain.

  “Someone must still dream,” Jani said to me. “The demon could only find us if someone calls his name.”

  “All men are on deck,” I said. “And none slumber.”

  “All men are on deck save one,” he told me, and then I knew how the captain had not detected the dreams. I and Jani slipped away below decks, unnoticed by sailors reaching for oars and oaths, staring at the horizon and praying to their gods. We met no one, once we’d descended, but a faint sound always seemed to come from just ahead.

  A sound from the captain’s room, with the sailor sent to retrieve him standing terror-struck and immobile at the door.

  “Zaius,” the captain said, chanted. “Zaius,” his voice rising with each repetition. “Zaius. Zaius. Zaius!”

  I tried the door and, finding it locked, slashed the lock with my blade. Inside, the captain writhed on his bed, and it become clear to what extent the barred door had muffled the sound. For he was not only saying the name but screaming it, bellowing it, and his eyes danced wild in their sockets.

  “Zursee!” I shouted, trying to be heard above the din.

  “He’s beyond help,” Jani said.

  Bowing my head, I advanced, blade raised against the presence of that invocation. Through the steel of the ship, I could hear the reverberations of the demon’s answering call, weaving and harmonizing with that of its summoner.

  I gave the captain a swift death.

  In the silence that followed, I first noticed the way the ship’s tremendous momentum had ceased altogether. The powerful vessel seemed but a parody of its captain, and, for all its mass, it seemed to writhe upon the waves as the demon Zaius, unimpeded by the captain’s death, surged nearer upon tides tumultuous.

  We ran for the deck, Jani and I, and I dealt the moaning messenger a one-stroke mercy as we passed by.

  The scene above was a hell dawning. More than half of the sailors were sprawled on the deck, eyes rolling as they shouted. Those that had not yet succumbed clawed at their own skin, screaming something, anything, to keep that voice from their thoughts, those words from their lips. A few, far too few, held out at the ship’s rear, repelling any of the touched that tried to come near with volleys of relic-fire, the shots inaudible in the din.

  “They are gone,” Jani said.

  The mate, among those last sane men, saw us. I could see the recognition in his eyes. “Sie!” he shouted, raising his relic towards us. “Kartographen!”

  The first shot, thunder-loud, missed us, but the second did not, and Jani fell, shrieking and trying to crawl towards safety. I dragged him to cover before they could fire, hiding us behind one of the deck’s many obstacles and obstructions to their clear sight and aim. The mate rallied those with him to come for us, no doubt thinking us responsible. Before, I’d never seen a relic with my own eyes. I now knew that even I couldn’t stand before one’s might.

  A wave rose upon the horizon. But not a wave that crashed and died. No, this wave but grew, and it turned as it did and shuddered. It was a wave alive with flesh and intent, speeding towards our vessel as a titanic eye opened in its center and a thousand unseen mouths shouted its own name in a thousand different tongues.

  What was that beneath all those noises? Could it be a final voice whispering that name, a voice in my mind and in my soul—a voice that was my own? But I had no time for such dark thoughts, such pessimistic possibilities. I grabbed Jani and dragged him towards the nearest lifeboat, and ignoring his weak and whimpering resistance.

  A man—the one who’d said cold the night before, I realized—walked into the center of the deck, staggering towards the ship’s rear and the creature beyond it. “Zaius,” he said, mindless, and I could see the lines of Out protruding from his mouth, waving in the breeze of his devotion. He collapsed, then, falling under a hail of relic-fire. But he rose again, and when he opened his mouth....

  Was it sentient, that tendril of nothingness? Controlled, in some hitherto unknown manner, by the beast? I didn’t know. But it shot straight for the mate, reached him and wrapped round him and left but a screaming, boiling mess in its wake.

  I savaged the cables holding up our lifeboat with Out-exploiting blows, and we crashed down into the sea. For a moment, nigh endless, my mind bore only one thought. Zaius, his name ultimate and ultimatum, threat and world entire.

  But I was not defeated. I drove out that beast with my vows and with the thought of the Lady that I served. And my oar bit the water.

  “All we’ve worked for,” Jani repeated, a defeatist litany, a rhythmic counterpoint to each stroke.

  Zaius reached the Kriegsflotte ship, and the sound of steel twisting and men dying echoed loud above the waves. Somewhere ahead, day turned to unnatural night, and the Out beckoned, terminal and growing.

  “Row into it,” Jani said, hands on his wound, voice pained and tone sure.

  I stared at him as at a man mad.

  “I can hide you there,” he said. “The demon will never think to find you in the Out.”

  “I believe you,” I said.

  “The Mapmaker will come for us.”

  “I believe you,” I said, again. I had no choice.

  * * *

  I was in night eternal, and I’d blindfolded myself with the remnants of my tunic. One of the last visions I’d had was Jani shredding his human form, skin splitting and mist pouring forth from his veins in a great and gaseous tide. The last... the last had been of the Kriegsflotte ship, mauled and sinking, and of the men aboard it, dead one and all, a sight magnified and dancing in the melted-mirror areality of the Out.

  Far off, in all directions, we heard the sounds of dementia. Of names, distant and unspoken and innumerable.

  “There was a time I doubted you,” Jani said as I bandaged his leg with what little of my own garb I’d left. The projectile had shattered the flesh but had stopped at the spirit, which still flowed flowing thick and undamaged within. He would likely never walk without pain again, but he would not die. “I know you’ll do what needs to be done,” he said.

  “To save the Towers,” I said.

  “No. To save the worlds.”

  * * *

  Did I dream dreams, in those days and hours and moments? I cannot remember. Looking back, that infernal and demonic name seems imprinted on all remembrances, but I believe it to be but a specter. One of sorrow, perhaps, and even guilt, at letting those Kriegsflotte die as they did.

  Zaius, that specter whispered in my mind, and I quieted it with willpower and force.

  “I trust you,” Jani said during one of our rests, at a time that might have been night or day, that might have been minutes or weeks since our last stop. I didn’t know how to respond.

  At the height of an indeterminate day, at the apex of an indeterminable hour, the Mapmaker came for us, and....

  * * *

  The Knight’s Quest

  ...we were saved,” the Knight Rollus said, finishing his tale as he knelt on the top floor of the Mapmaker’s tower. The tower was open to the sky and looked down on the world, and, in its way, was the world. The court of the Mapmaker sat silent around him.

  This structure was taller than even those Towers for which his world had been named. From here, the unified lands could be seen stretching impossibly far all around. Beyond, the Out endless; but he could not feel the Out here, not even a trace, not a single of its lines. Darkness truly had been banished in the land of the cartographic tyran
t, and Rollus knew fear. He was helpless here.

  “It is true,” Jani, now back at the Mapmaker’s side, said. “Every word of his tale is reality.”

  Knights cannot lie; wisdom that all knew. But he could—he’d cut those truth-telling runes from his tongue with the Lady Clarissa’s blessing, and those wounds bled red invisible as he spoke his deception. Appearance is reality, his Lady had told him so many times, and so it was, the Mapmaker now reaching down to pull him up with Her own hands. Believing his words; his lies of omission and intent.

  “This knight,” She said in Her so augmented voice, “has sacrificed everything. He, and the Lady Lord that he serves, rose above their neighbors, and even their society, to do what had to be done; treated Salvation as a cause greater than safety, life a goal stronger than comfort. Like most visionaries, like most rebels, he was hunted—but he survived!”

  Rebels, like all those against his Lady’s wishes, deserved death in Rollus’s eyes. He supposed he should be afraid, standing in front of this once-human demigod, this Mapmaker who had led to so many deaths. But he felt nothing; only duty.

  Her skin was like a tapestry of inhumanity, skin engraved with a living map, the lines of which seemed to dance upon Her flesh. She seemed at varying times a woman and a personification of the landscape, the caves and structures of Her face more landmarks than features.

  The Mapmaker said to him, speaking low as if they shared some private booth, “I’ve a quest to offer you. A chance few men receive: the chance to save their world. Those you love are doomed, but, with your aid, their world and race can live on. I need you to enter your home, that world of Towers, and destroy the, as you call them, Placement Stones that lie beneath it. Only then can your people attain salvation.”

  I know you’ll do what needs to be done, Jani had said, Rollus remembered. I trust you. His trust had been misplaced, for Rollus’s loyalties had their beginning and their end, and both extremes dwelt within the Towers that were his home.