The road down the hill turned into a roller coaster filled with the pattering of naked rat feet on hard-packed dirt. We passed an ROGS caravan headed up to the monastery, each giant rat loaded to the breaking point with provisions, crates and bundles. Yes, they were pack rats, and Maraz had no idea why I was laughing.
The village, Caifa, wasn’t a major port or trade crossroads, but it managed to have a reasonably large market. Most of the offerings consisted of fruits, spices, and seafood, with occasional capybara-sized rodents and one or two butchered pigs. One group of Humans had clothes and textiles, all dyed in bright primary colors and geometric designs. Maraz said they were from a village about ten miles inland.
We passed a paddock full of giant rats munching on piles of kitchen sweepings, and an adjoining one populated with heavily-muscled, axe-beaked, ten-foot tall terror birds. Yes, honest-to-goodness chocobos, cawing and shrieking as they tore through piles of pig offal. They were available for rent, and apparently they were the local answer to horses.
Maraz traded blessing a fisherman’s nets for a ride out to the wreck and back. The fisherman’s ship was a forty-foot catamaran with a raised rear deck straddling the two hulls. His sails must have been blessed as well, for once they were up, it was all we could do to find a secure patch of netting and hang on.
The fisherman finally furled the sails and coasted to a stop near a jagged row of underwater breakers. While Maraz did our breathing enchantments, he broke out a fishing pole and a pony keg of ale. We waved and dropped over the side.
The water was diamond-clear and warmer than I expected. The ship rested just below our boat, partially buried in white sand. I took a few pictures of the swarms of fish populating the reef and a few of coral-encrusted ship parts.
As we got close to the ship, Maraz held her hand up and pointed at another group of swimmers. These were reptilian, alligators with humanoid arms and legs ending in wicked claws. There were two adults and five young ones, apparently on a hunting trip. Maraz made several signs with her hands and waited for a response.
I got part of the answer—a
stab it with a spear
motion—but little else until the very end. One of them pointed out into the deep ocean and drew a slanted hand along his level forearm. It looked disturbingly like a shark fin moving through water.
Maraz repeated the gesture, sliding her hand further up and away from her arm, sort of but not quite the way one would normally sign
good morning
.
The lizardman responded with his arm extended clear above his elbow. Well, on the good side, any shark that big is one we’ll see a long way away. I hope.
Maraz waved again, and we resumed our dive into the wreck. It was less a wrecked ship than it was a ship-shaped reef with a grotto where the lower deck used to be. The dark recesses and shattered planks sheltered hosts of tiny glittering fish, bolting from shadow to shadow as we moved through the hulk. The most threatening thing I saw was a six-foot eel with glowing blue spots running down the side, and it was headed away from us.
We poked through the hull for a while, but the ship had indeed been picked clean. We moved away from the ship and poked through the debris field for a bit. I found a broken ceramic cup, but left it behind.
Two large groups of arm-length dark fish raced by while we were poking around. I looked up to see where they were coming from and saw several more groups popping up over the elevated port side of the ship. They were coming in from deep water. We swam over to the side and peered over it, looking out into the darkness.
Shark. It was longer than one of those articulated city buses, with a mouth that could swallow my Range Rover. Its sides had rows of luminescent spots running from gills to tail, flaring and fading as the muscles underneath moved. Its gaze swept over me, and I was rooted in place.
The more I looked at the pattern of light on the shark’s side, the more I wanted to run. Not just run, but flee for my life in blind panic. As it swam closer, the stronger the urge to run became.
Maraz grabbed my ankles and hauled me into the grotto inside the ship. I tried to swim out past her. She punched me in the stomach and held me until the fear faded. Eventually, I looked at her and gave her a nod.
Maraz patted me on the shoulder and pointed up. I nodded again and followed her back to the catamaran. The fisherman hadn’t actually caught any fish, but he was most of the way through the pony keg. Some standards of fishing success are universal.
I said, “I’m sorry I panicked down there. That’s never happened to me before.”
Maraz shook her head. “The bands on the shark’s side created it. They charge the water to drive prey from hiding. I should have warned you about the effect, but lantern sharks are very rare in these waters.”
“I see. Well, thank you. For punching me.”
Maraz leaned back on the netting. “My pleasure, David.”
The return trip took somewhat longer than the trip out—the sails needed a few more hours to capture enough wind to propel the ship again. Maraz and I kicked back to enjoy the ride instead of hanging on for dear life. I got a few more photos, including some nice shots of another group of lizardmen spearfishing off a large raft.
Maraz poked me with her toes and asked, “Why don’t you want to take pictures of me, David? You take pictures of everything else.”
I looked down and blushed. “I wasn’t sure if it would offend you, or if you would want people back home seeing you…like this.”
“Naked?” She laughed. “I’m an Ideal. Let them look. If I inspire them, or make them envious, or fill them with wonder, or give them a few minutes of fevered imagination, I’ve succeeded.” She struck a pose and asked, “Do you think they’ll remember me once they’ve seen this?” I settled for nodding and taking the picture.
Maraz kept posing for a bit, mostly muscle and bodybuilding shots. She also did a few close-up portraits and detail shots of her beard braiding. Not that I was likely to try anything like it myself, but it was fascinating to look at.
The sun was low on the horizon by the time we returned to the dock. There was no way to get back up to the dining hall in time to get dinner, so we bought a skin of fermented fruit juices and a basket of roast pork ribs to eat in the scurrier on the way up. We gave the driver an extra coin, and the rats got to chew on the rib bones back in the stable.
The monastery gatehouse and watchtowers were flying bright yellow flags with diagonal black stripes. “Storm warning,” Maraz said. “We’ll need to get extra provisions in case we’re housebound tomorrow.”
“How bad will it get?”
“It’s not typhoon season, so it won’t be the worst of what we get,” Maraz replied. “Still, if you lose your footing, the winds can blow you off the edge. It’s happened before. We’ll settle in and wait it out unless there’s an emergency.”
“Why not have everyone sleep in the dining hall tonight?”
“If the storm is bad enough, we will. If it’s not too bad, we’ll work out as normal in the morning. Otherwise, we hunker down and hope it doesn’t get unbearable.”
We stopped by the mess hall and checked in for the night. The staff gave us extra skins of water, a basket full of rice and noodles, and a pair of blankets. They were woven from giant rat underfur and were far softer than they sounded.
The storm would be too much for our linen door, so we fitted a wooden storm shutter across the opening and fixed it into place with bamboo crossbars. The roof might be thatch, but it was still Dwarven engineering. I’d expect the walls to spring a leak before the roof did.
Maraz took the hammocks down and put together a pallet on the floor. “We’ll sleep like this tonight. Makes falling out of bed a lot more difficult.” I couldn’t argue with that logic—stone floors hurt. I got settled and connected the phone to the solar station to recharge.
Maraz propped herself up on one elbow and asked, “Did you bring images of your home world along? Other than the ones of your family, I mean.”
“Good question. Let me see what I have.” I had some anime and classic TV shows I’d loaded for our flight to Mumbai, but those wouldn’t help. At that point, I smacked my head and pulled up the pictures I’d taken in India.
“Here we go. This isn’t the country I live in, but Mumbai is one of the biggest cities we have back home. There are also a lot of baby pictures.”
“Oh, ho,” she said. “You are a father. Show me your child.”
She browsed through the pictures while I told her about Sharon and how she died. Like Rose, she accepted the whole arrangement without blinking. “You gave your friend a great gift,” was all she said.
Once she was finished, I set the phone to charge and asked, “So, what did you think of Mumbai?”
“Your people wear a lot of clothes,” she said. “And there are so many of you. How does the wind ever get into those cities? The smell must be horrible.”
“Sometimes. Pollution, garbage disposal, clean water, crime—all of those are real problems.” I shrugged. “Denver, the city I live in, only has around two million people in and around it. Mumbai has more than twenty million people living in it. Way too many for my taste.”
“Twenty…million. In one city.” She shook her head. “How can your world support so many? Aren’t they starving?”
“Maraz, the population of my world is seven billion. And yes, some of them are starving. Many are poor. Some have no education, some go to school for twenty years. It’s far from perfect.”
“I didn’t expect perfect,” she replied. “I did wonder how a Dragon could pass unnoticed, but…all those people. It’s madness.”
I blew out the oil lamp and settled into bed. “It is. So many of us want more from life, or want a better world. We look beyond what’s there and try to see what could be. That need is what draws the Dragons to us. People who are satisfied with what is can’t nourish them.”
Outside, the wind started to pick up, and the first gentle drops of rain hit the roof. They didn’t stay gentle for long. The wind gave a few hard gusts and fell off to nothing before driving the rain against the shutters like a fusillade of bullets. Thunder followed hard on its heels, becoming the steady booming of distant cannon in the night.
Even muted by the stone walls, the storm drove away all thoughts of sleep. Maraz finally rolled up on one elbow and asked, “What do you do to make your world a better place, David?”
“I… I don’t know.” I listened to the rain for a moment, trying to think of something. “I helped save the world once, but it didn’t make much of a difference since nobody knows about it.” I paused for a bit more, unsure how to proceed. I described my job as being record keeper to an apothecary. That she understood well enough, but explaining about Thain’s plot and going to the Feds took a while.
When I finished, Maraz nodded. “I’m not sure about some of what you said, but I understand you did the right thing despite the cost. That answers my question.”
“Do I meet your standard for being a good citizen?”
Maraz shrugged. “Do you meet yours?”
I thought about it for a few seconds. “I’m trying to.”
“Then you meet mine.”
We lay there in silence for a while. Long after Maraz dropped off to sleep, I stared at the ceiling, acutely aware of how much I was missing Rose. I wanted to measure up to what Maraz expected of me—in the same way any army recruit wants to succeed in the eyes of their drill instructor—but even that feeling wound up being hijacked by the acceptance, and turned into longing to be reunited with Rose.
I didn’t mind it. I minded not minding. I didn’t want to cheat on Rose with Maraz—not that Maraz would let it happen—but I wanted to be able to want to. Even that thought left me missing Rose all the more.
The acceptance was intended to be temporary. Did anyone, even the Dragons who engineered it, have any idea what the long-term effects would be?
Brief, Brief the Pain
Morning arrived far too early. The storm was still going on, but it was down to heavy rains and only light winds. We spent the morning cleaning up our hut, and were back to sparring after lunch.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but I’d woken with a burning desire to prove I wasn’t anyone’s puppet. As soon as we got out on the sands, I asked if Altia was ready for our promised bout.
Maraz asked, “Are you sure you want to do it now? You might have a line of folks waiting for you by the end of the day.”
“Bring them on,” I said. “If they want a piece of me, I’ll oblige them.” I didn’t feel as cocky as that sounded, and wasn’t sure I’d win. Regardless, when Altia looked at me and nodded, I felt a rush of joy. I couldn’t help but grin at her.
Altia’s weapon of choice was a razor chain—a kind of steel whip. I’d seen her slice limbs off of pig carcasses with it. The ghost steel version wouldn’t actually cut me, but it would feel like walking into a blender. We stepped out onto the sand and bowed to each other. When Maraz dropped her hand, I charged.
Altia was weakest when she was just starting. It would take a few seconds for her chains to get up to speed. In that time, I got close enough to drive my shoulder into her solar plexus. She fell backward, dropping her whips. She rolled sideways, reaching for one of the whips, and I took her head off with a two-handed down stroke.
Maraz pointed to me and shouted, “Victor!”
I gave my ghost steel sword a flourish and started laughing. “Who’s next?” I shouted. “Who else has a grievance with me? Anyone? Anyone?” I turned in place, holding my arms out to my side. “Who’s next? Who wants to face me? I welcome you!”
Maraz walked up to me and clapped her hand on my shoulder. “How do you feel, David?”
“I feel…wonderful,” I said. “Unstoppable. ‘If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, bathing the world in brilliance, it would be like unto the splendor of the Mighty One. I am eternal, all-consuming fate. I am born Shiva the destroyer. Death. The Shatterer of Worlds
’
.” I lowered my arms and took several deep breaths. “This is it, isn’t it? The battle-joy you talked about?”