And so, the crew offered their goodnights. The only one not to do so was Emuel, who had retired long before.
In their cabin Silus admired Katya as she slept, impressed that she had managed to hold court with as much élan as the drunken men who surrounded her. He kissed her as she sighed in her sleep, she didn't need drink to be witty or to be persuaded into song. Silus watched her for a moment more before leaving the cabin.
On the main deck the wheel held steady, set to a course that Dunsany and Kelos had decided between them. The boards of the deck steamed slightly as the recent rains dried and Silus enjoyed the touch of this gentle mist as he lay down.
Kerberos seemed to hang lower and larger in the sky than usual and he wondered whether the seas they were traversing would prove to be a path to the seat of the ancestors. (Father Maylan had told him that all paths lead to Kerberos, but Silus didn't fully understand what he meant). Taking a telescope from a pocket he trained it on the azure orb and watched the play of clouds that covered its surface. He wondered how many times he had sent entreaties into those impenetrable vapours. How many times had he asked a blessing of the ancestors who resided there, or cursed the unknowable sphere for some imagined bad luck or malady?
Silus put the telescope down and closed his eyes. Below him, the deck pitched gently and, for the first time during the voyage, he felt calm, though always there was the fear that the Chadassa would find them.
The susurrus of the sea and the touch of a gentle wind conspired with the alcohol in his blood to take him into sleep, and he gave up consciousness gladly.
He was falling towards an endless sea of clouds. On the horizon the first rays of a rising run sent shards of light across the slowly evolving landscape below. Flickering tongues of lightning erupted from hills of vapour, heavy with the threat of thunder while clouds parted to open up on great amethyst pools, their depths endless and hungry.
Far above him hung a blue-green sphere and he knew that it was from there that he had fallen.
He drifted down into the purple sea and the clouds parted only briefly to mark his passage.
He had no way of measuring the speed of his descent. On all sides he was surrounded by slowly rolling thunderheads, skeins of mist and great valleys and peaks that constantly shifted and changed.
A shadow passed him and he saw that there were other travellers in the storm.
He noted the look of serenity on the faces of those that fell past, arms outstretched, before they faded from view. Others rode the columns of cloud that boiled up from the depths below. He recognised one man, rocketing towards him, as Pandrick, the owner of The Necromancer's Barge. Windmilling his arms, he managed to get out of the way before Pandrick collided with him. He shouted a greeting to the publican, but any response that he may have called was eaten by the howling winds.
He only had a moment to consider what lay below him, on the other side of the clouds, before he was through and he saw for himself.
Silus was thrown out of sleep, across the deck and into the side of a locker as the
Llothriall
came to a sudden halt.
He struggled to regain his breath as, with a clatter of footsteps, the crew rushed up from below.
"I though that you said nothing could stop this ship." Jacquinto shouted.
"Yes, well I wasn't counting on running into the tip of a bloody great spire out on the open seas now was I?" Dunsany snapped.
Nursing the large bruise that was beginning to blossom on the small of his back, Silus got to his feet and joined them at the prow of the ship.
There, rising above the masts, was a tapering column of stone. Looking over the side of the ship Silus could see a ragged hole where they had collided with it.
"Bail! Now!" He shouted, starting to move. But Kelos put a hand out to stop him.
"No Silus. The
Llothriall
will provide for herself. Look."
Silus followed the direction of Kelos's pointed finger and saw a membrane forming over the hole. With a wet
pop
it quickly closed up, re-sealing the ship.
"In time she'll even grow a new skin of wood. Now, what do we have here?" Kelos said, the excitement of discovery evident in his voice.
Silus began to relax as he realised that they weren't about to sink and he took in the strange vista before them.
The structure that they had run into was just one of a ring of six towers, rising from the waves. Gulls called to each other as they swooped around the delicate spires or nested in niches in the columns of brightly marbled stone. None of the towers rose any taller than the one which had stopped the
Llothriall
, though several were grander in design. Intricate carvings had been wrought into three of them. From where Silus stood it was difficult to make out many details, but on one he thought that he could see the design of a figure riding a whale, surrounded by smaller creatures that may have been mermaids.
"Gods, what is it?" Katya said, joining them.
Silus slipped a hand into hers and with the other he shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun.
"It looks like the towers of a cathedral or castle." He said. "But who would have built such a thing out here?"
"Not the Chadassa?" Katya said, her grip on Silus's hand tightening.
"I don't think so," Dunsany said. "If it was I'd expect them to be swarming all over us by now."
There were starting to drift away from the towers and Dunsany signalled to Jacquinto to secure the ship. He scurried up the foremast with a rope, Ignacio in his wake, while Ioannis shouted guidance from below. With a dexterity and grace that Silus would not have expected of such weathered brutes they managed to loop the rope over the stone column before pulling the ship in close.
"Well I told you that we'd discover something soon enough didn't I?" Kelos said. "Ah, Emuel, you're awake. What do you make of this?"
The ship's eunuch emerged from below deck, looking so pale that he positively glowed, the tattoos that marked his face and hands standing out starkly against his flesh. He looked at the circle of gull-covered stone, his hands idly toying with the hem of his robe.
"The towers of a cathedral perhaps?" He said.
"Which means that there must be more to see below." Dunsany said.
"Emuel are you okay?" Katya said, noticing the perspiration that beaded the eunuch's forehead.
"Oh, don't worry about him," Ignacio said. "He always looks like that. He'll be pining for the Faith."
"I... I had an unpleasant dream. I'll be okay."
Katya put a hand to Emuel's forehead. The flesh there was hot and clammy.
"You're not well. Come on, let's get you some rest." She led Emuel below.
"Good idea," Dunsany called after them. "Make sure that the poor chap is comfortable and we'll explore that which lies below. By the way, does anybody know where Maylan is?"
"Still lost in the clutches of the weed," Ioannis said. "Not even running aground managed to rouse him."
"Then would you mind trying to wake him? He won't want to miss this."
Ioannis nodded and followed Katya and Emuel below.
"Dunsany, how are you proposing that we explore underwater?" Silus said. "We don't know how far down these towers reach and we're not going to be able to hold our breath for long enough to make anything out."
"As the
Llothriall
was being built there were several alchemists and mages working on a sort of suit that allows for underwater exploration." Dunsany said.
"And have these 'sort of suits' been tested?" said Jacquinto.
"Well, actually no." Kelos said. "Because Dunsany and I stole the ship before they could get that far. But we have eight of the suits below and there's very little doubt in my mind that they will work."
"To be honest I'd prefer no doubt to very little, but I suppose we should see for these things for ourselves." Silus said.
They descended to the lowest deck and were joined there, in a low square room, by a bleary-eyed Father Maylan and a fresher looking Ioannis.
"Ioannis tells me that there's something to see out there." Maylan said.
"We have run into a tower," Kelos said.
"Right, I'll give you a hand readying the boats."
"No need. We have everything we require here."
Kelos slid back a wall panel to reveal a row of eight identical suits.
A domed hood with large ovals of glass set into thick material sat on top of a baggy one-piece garment made of what appeared to be heavily waxed cloth.
"Those things are far too big." Silus said. "How do you expect us to move around in them down there?"
"Each of these suits will fit the wearer perfectly. Perhaps you would help me demonstrate?"
Silus struggled to get his arms and legs into the rumpled suit and, when he did, the material sagged around him in folds and crinkles.
Jacquinto laughed. "Could it be that the elves were considerably fatter than the legends state?"
"These suits weren't taken from elven design," Kelos said. "Believe it or not they were actually put together by the Final Faith themselves. Anyway, as I said, the suit will fit the wearer perfectly. Note the disk of metal on the chest? Watch."
Kelos took an identical disk from a drawer and touched it to the one attached to the suit. Instantly the material came to life, contracting around Silus until it fit him like a second skin.
"It's water tight and also protects against the cold. Now, the hood attaches like so."
Kelos placed the hood on Silus's head and it sealed itself to the suit with a sound like an indrawn breath. Silus stared out of the eyepieces, the glass throwing everything into perfect definition.
"Right, and how are we supposed to breathe down there?" He said. "There's a hole where my mouth is but I presume that you're not expecting us to inhale water?"
"Ah, now this is the really ingenious part. The secret is worms."
"Worms?" Father Maylan said. "He's going to breathe worms? Tell you what, I think I'm going to go back to my bunk. Let me know how you got on with that worm breathing thing on your return."
"No, of course he's not going to breathe worms. The worms are going to provide the air. Look."
Kelos opened a compartment and took out a gourd-like object. He unscrewed the bottom half to show an empty base. Opening another compartment he took out a box, which contained a writhing mass of midnight blue worms.
"These creatures were first discovered in the World's Ridge Mountains. When fed a certain mineral they will actually fart out, if you'll pardon the expression, air. So, we're going to need a couple of scoops of you fellows." He spooned the worms into the base of the gourd, "and then we sprinkle two measures of the mineral powder over the top." From a vial, Kelos poured a dark powder onto the worms before sealing up the two halves of the gourd. "Then we just give it a quick shake to get the process going."
"That reminds me of a cocktail I once had at Here There Be Flagons," Dunsany said. "It actually made me go blind for half a day."
Kelos screwed the narrow end of the gourd to the mouthpiece of the hood.
"Now Silus," he said, raising his voice, "you should be able to breathe. Give me a thumbs up if all is okay."
Silus felt a moment of claustrophobia as he heard Kelos's muffled voice through the thick hood. There was a strange taste in his mouth that reminded him of rock dust and honey but when he took a breath, the air was cool and pure.
He raised his thumbs and nodded.
"Excellent." Dunsany said. "Right, I suggest the rest of you get suited up and then we can have a look at what's out there."
Chapter Ten
They descended roped together, each carrying a glowing stone to light their way. When they entered the circle of towers Silus looked down and tried to see through the gloom below them, but whatever awaited them there was hidden for now.
Behind Silus trailed the three smugglers, followed by Father Maylan. Watching them climb into the strange suits had been a comical affair. As Jacquinto had pulled the suit over his legs he had leaned on Ignacio, knocking his brother into the renegade priest. Maylan had then stumbled into Ioannis and the two of them had tumbled to the floor. Katya had come to see the men before they ventured forth and, despite her tiredness and the worry that lined her face, she managed a chuckle at the sight of them in their various states of disarray, looking like some strange new race of sea creature in their bizarre garb.
"Any sign of danger, any sign of the Chadassa, I want you out of there," she said.
"Of course," Dunsany replied. "Don't worry, we'll be perfectly alright."
Katya had then touched her forehead to the hood of Silus's suit, mouthing
I love you
, before watching him follow the crew through the portal in the side of the ship and out into the sea.
The sudden cold that Silus had expected on entering the water didn't come. Instead there was just the warm embrace of the suit as he swam away from the
Llothriall
, his breath echoing hollowly and the beat of his pulse amplified by the confines of the hood.
Silus followed Kelos and Dunsany, the glow of the stone in the mage's right hand bobbing ahead of him like a will-o'-the wisp. Fish and other marine creatures swam in close, attracted by the illumination; some responding with their own bursts of light, briefly defining strange piscine forms in the darkness.
As the crew were rounding the curve of one of the towers they were suddenly confronted by the reflection of their glowstones in the pupils of an enormous fish. It opened its mouth and inflated to twice its original size, its gullet a dark tunnel lined with barbs. Pseudopods extended from the brow of the creature to paw the water around Kelos, one exploring the hood of his suit. Silus hoped that the probing tentacle wouldn't puncture the material, but the creature clearly didn't regard Kelos as prey as, after a moment's exploration, it swam away.
Kelos made sure that it was out of sight before giving the hand signal to proceed.
They followed the towers down and soon the surface was lost to view. Silus wondered how far below them lay whatever supported these mighty columns, or whether there were just the towers themselves, leading to unfathomable sunless depths.