Chương 38: Chapter 37 – Grave Robbing

The anchor's chain rattled as it dropped into the deep. Passage stared at the water, moonlight rippling on an obsidian mirror, and rubbed the stone amulet between his fingers. He wasn't sure whether any magic still remained in the broken bell's fragment, but it steadied him just the same. True to Lio's word, they had left Flotsam in the morning after the young captain finished peacocking around town. He'd made a show of fetching an ornate chest from a warehouse, escorted by armed crewmen.

The journey back to Maerholt had been slower, taking most of the day. They emerged from the cliff-walled channel back onto the Stillwake as the sun was going down.

"You lot ready?" Lio asked, joining them on the prow. The other Wyrms stood around Passage, the five of them clustered together. Lio had refused to elaborate on what the night held, and none of them were in a trusting mood.

"Ready for what, exactly?" Passage asked.

"Last leg of the journey," said Lio. He gestured for them to follow and led them to the starboard side where a wooden dinghy hung from ropes. He pulled away the tarp covering it, handing the cloth to one of his men, then climbed into the smaller boat.

"Are you joking?" Sable asked, leaning over the railing to eye the water below. None of them would soon forget the nightmares living in the lake.

"Hermits and other Hollows don't tend to attack this close to the site. If anything, they seem to avoid it. We're safe up here but bring your weapons just in case."

"Up here?" Ressa asked. Passage turned to Lio, the words catching his attention as well, like a fishhook through his cheek. Lio just winked and gestured for the five of them to climb aboard. Bracken was the first to move. He vaulted over the railing and turned a smile of them all.

"Come on," he said, "adventure awaits." Sable and Torvin were next, neither willing to be thought a coward. Bracken made room, sitting down towards the rear, the vessel swaying on the ropes. Passage helped Ressa in, then followed himself. It seemed only right that standing in the tiny boat, his footing should feel so uncertain. They found their seats, all clutching weapons close, as Lio whistled for the crew to lower them down. Ropes groaned and the winch squealed as they dropped onto the lake.

Passage untethered the rope at the front, while Lio saw to the back, and then they were adrift. Cold radiated from the water, smooth and still as ice. Passage's breath misted before him, lingering far longer than it should. Ressa's hand found Passage's at his side, fingers weaving between his own. He closed his hand around hers as she pulled it into her lap, and kept his eyes aimed forward.

"Hold on," Lio said, fiddling with something metallic at the back of the boat. There came a rumbling whir and their dinghy surged into motion, far faster than any of them could have rowed. They cut through the black, propelled by an Implement that bubbled the water behind them, a V of white-churned water in their wake. Wind tussled Passage's hair and butterflies tickled his insides, a smile twitching on his lips despite everything.

Torvin whooped and halfway stood, before Sable and Bracken dragged him back down, the three of them and Lio laughing. Passage turned, grinning down at Ressa, but found only guilt etched in her expression. The butterflies in Passage's stomach died. He squeezed her hand and made a vow. Whatever it was between them, this unspoken thing, had been growing now for years. When they reached Vellinport, he'd see to it that the Wyrms would turn from crime.

She deserved a life where every joy was not tainted by guilt, and he would find a way to give that to her. They did not travel far, perhaps five hundred metres from the ship, before Lio stopped the Implement. A clump of rotting wood bobbed on the surface nearby, the only thing approaching a landmark that Passage could see nearby. There was precious little else to mark this patch of black water from any other on the Stillwake.

Up close, Passage could make out glints of metal nails shining in the cluster, and a bit of rope trailing from one end. It was a pontoon, of sorts, disguised as driftwood.

"You're all going to want to hold on now," Lio declared, sounding like Bracken on the verge of some reveal. Showmanship and pride, it ran in their blood. Passage obeyed, gripping the edge of the boat with his free hand and twisting in his seat to look at Lio. The eldest Mercer reached into his shirt and withdrew a silver chain. On its end dangled a silver vial which he unscrewed, a faint blue light spilling out from inside.

Lio watched them all closely, a smirk on his lips, as he tipped a tiny marble onto his palm, more of the beads rattling in the vial. It looked like a soap bubble, smaller than a fingernail, a shard of crystalised blue-white light shimmering at its heart. Passage gripped the boatside harder, nervousness mingling with alien giddiness as Aerwyn's magic brushed against his skin. With a wink, Lio tossed it into the water some distance from their boat.

The light sank slowly, visible through the black longer than Passage would've expected. Then it was gone.

"What was that?" Bracken broke the silence. Lio held up a finger for patience, staring intently at the water. The water began to swirl. A tiny hole opened in its surface, dipping down as if a plug had been pulled in a basin. It grew swiftly, the water sloping down in a widening gyre, a cyclone forming beneath the surface. It spread quickly, twisting and pulling in the water around itself, their boat was snagged into its orbit. Lio sat, taking hold of the boat himself, eyes alight with excitement.

"Lio, what the fuck is going on?" Bracken asked, white knuckles in his voice.

"Fisher, have mercy," Torvin prayed quietly, giddy and fearful both.

"Is it too late to wait on the fuckin' boat?" Lio ignored them both and their tiny vessel tilted as they fell into the whirlpool, swirling down and around towards its still sinking mouth. They gained speed, faster and faster, swirling endlessly, in a chorus of whoops and curses and shrieks. Wind ripped past them, snatching their voices as they spun endlessly into the depths. The water continued to rise around them, a white frothing cyclone with them at its heart, frigid spray splashing across their faces.

Ten metres down, then fifty, then a hundred, two hundred, they sank until the night sky was a speck of distant black. Pressure built in Passage's ears, muffling the sounds of terror and elation from his friends. The walls of their watery tower suddenly gave way, ballooning outward to form the ceiling of an immense underwater cavern. Implements fastened to the ceiling and the walls of an enormous sea cave lit the space like glass stars floating in a river of night, pitch darkness flowing between them.

They splashed down on the surface of an underground lake, the ceiling some ten metres above their heads. The entrance in the ceiling winked shut, the watery tunnel to the sky collapsing in on itself. The Stillwake's obsidian surface smoothed out, ringed by lights in the roof of their cave, it gleamed like a portal into oblivion. A faint shimmer of blue-white light gleamed across its surface, more of Aerwyn's magic holding the water in check.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Passage swallowed hard.

"How do we get back out?" he asked.

"Same way we got in," Lio shook the silver vial, as proud as if he had worked the magic himself.

"That was amazing," Bracken gasped, dreams dancing in his eyes. The immediate thrill passed and Passage felt the weight of that great stone ceiling bearing down on him, a weight pressing on his lungs. The entire Stillwake sat above them, held in check by nought but the magic of an unknown Stained. He shuddered. If the air above had been frigid, the cavern was filled with the breath of winter itself.

Passage tucked his free hand into his sleeve and shuffled closer to Ressa as Lio started up the Implement engine once more. They cut across the lake, passing between islands of light towards a dock at the far end. A stone beach, better lit than the rest of the cavern, greeted them. They tied off the boat and clambered ashore, all five of them looking around in wonder. Closer to the wall, Passage squinted at the strange way that light danced across its surface.

Jet black and smooth as glass, he ran a hand across the stone and realised it was ice. They stood not in a cave, but in an air bubble trapped within a massive underwater glacier. A little way deeper in, a narrow tunnel burrowed through the ice, short enough that Passage would need to duck to walk through it. From it, emerged two men wrapped in furs and armed with flanged maces.

"Sir," one of them greeted Lio. He had a short beard flecked with grey and the hard look of a mercenary about him. His partner looked much the same. The pair of them sized up the Wyrms, their gazes lingering on Passage. That was the trouble with being so damn big. When the wrong sort of men saw him, they tended to ask themselves the wrong sort of questions.

"Blake, Pullo," Lio clasped hands with Blake and slapped him on the back before doing the same with Pullo. He gestured at Passage and the others, the five of them still huddling close together.

"My brother, Bracken, and his friends. They've come for the grand tour."

"Very good, sir," Blake nodded.

"Any change since last time?" Lio asked.

"None. We've stopped excavating any further. We just chip away the ice whenever too much of it grows back, but nothing past the fingers," Pullo reported.

"Good, see that it stays that way. No unnecessary risks."

"Lio, what in the name of Fisher's blue balls is going on?" Bracken interrupted.

"Where the fuck are we?"

"Follow me and you'll see," Lio beamed. The guards led them into the tunnel. Voices echoed strangely down its length from deeper within. Passage hunched down low to keep his head from banging on the ceiling. He followed at the rear of their party, casting one last regretful look at the boat bobbing by the peer. He tried not to imagine the ice cracking and a million tonnes of freezing water crashing down on top of them. He failed.

The tunnel led to a small room, the ceiling just high enough for Passage to stand up straight. It was better lit in there, a table at its centre surrounded by three more guards. Two women and a man, likewise, clad in furs that Passage was fast beginning to envy them for. They rose to greet Lio as he entered, nodding perfunctorily at the rest of them as Lio made introductions. Small doorways blocked off by curtains led to other rooms branching from the central space. Bunks, a kitchen, an armoury and a larder.

A miniature compound had been excavated within the black ice. One of the guards fetched spare coats, their insides lined with a thick layer of wool and handed one to each of them. Passage's barely fit but he was glad for it all the same. A cauldron bubbled over a flat disk of carved metal, an Implement acting as a stove in the corner. Blake ladled a cup for each of them and handed out the steaming liquid.

"Drink it," Lio ordered, "all of it. It's not safe to go any deeper until you do." Passage sniffed the potion when it was handed to him, nose wrinkling at the bitter scent. Sharply medicinal with earthy undertones, the drink was the colour of mud. The guard sprinkled something like salt into his cup and offered him a nod.

"What is it?" Passage asked, none of the Wyrms daring yet to take a sip.

"Tea, made from sageroot. Tastes like shit, but it'll keep you steady. Numbs the heart and soul," Lio explained.

"Sageroot?" Bracken asked on behalf of the rest of them. Not just rich people shit then, but something rarer.

"Grows in Gnoros. Won't make you any smarter, and useless for Staining, but it helps prevent accidents in a place like this."

"Accidents?" Ressa asked.

"Places like this?" echoed Bracken at the same time. Lio tapped the side of his nose and gave them all a wink.

"Sooner you stop asking questions and drink up, the sooner you'll get your answers."

"Can't say I'm a fan of this mystery shit, Lio," Passage grumbled. With no better options, he drank the brew. It tasted as bad as it smelled. Heat bloomed in his belly, spread through his chest. It raced down his veins, surging forward with each pump of his heart, burning away the cold and any other sort of feeling, leaving a pleasant numbness behind. It should've been startling or… Passage struggled to imagine what he might normally feel, his heart as numb as his muscles.

Within moments, the only thing he felt was a vague sort of curiosity. He looked to the others, seeing a similar sort of deadpan scepticism in their faces. Even Bracken, normally so expressive, wore only the slightest frown.

"Gentlemen, gentleladies, if you'll follow me," Lio downed his potion and led them past a curtain into another winding corridor of ice. This one was longer and winding, switching back and forth as it snaked through the glacier. Passage counted his steps, counted his breaths, counted the beating of his heart. His earlier claustrophobia forgotten, he marvelled at the strange, sharp-witted drunkenness of the brew until at last they emerged.

Two hundred metres, at least, between the cavern and the compound, by his estimation. The others saw it first, each of them gasping or swearing in turn despite the potion's effects. When Passage at last emerged, he understood why. They stood in another cavernous space. A lab of sorts was set up to their left. Vessels of glass and metal adorned a benchtop and assorted excavation tools hung from racks, some of them clearly Implements. That wasn't what caught Passage's attention. The space was better lit than others.

The Implements burned bright enough that the ice was bleached of colour in some places, illuminating creatures trapped within. Fish, mostly, but also the murky outlines of monstrous Hollows suspended in time. But it was a single figure at the far side of the room that had frozen Passage in awe. Some deep-seated instinct bade him kneel, whispered to his soul that he was small, and young, and knew not where he roamed. Thirty feet tall, at least. Hair like seaweed, notched in dark green pearls.

Eyes closed and head tilted back, grief on her face. Her skin was deepest blue, the dimensions of her body strange by human standards. Overlong of limb with thick bunches of muscle at each of her joints. She wore a gleaming dress of scales, each one larger and thicker than Passage's hand. They seemed harvested from some great leviathan of the deep. A gaping wound split her body, from shoulder to hip.

"A Maeruki?" Passage whispered the question. Not that any Maeruki could grow so large. They tended to be nine or ten feet tall at most and usually hunched outside of water. The woman trapped in the ice was a titan by any definition.

"Not a Maeruki, the Maeruki," Lio corrected, the potion insufficient to dull his pride.

"Maerun herself, the first Maeruki, last to sit upon Seldun's throne before Fisher and Silk cast her down." Passage stumbled back a step; one hand pressed to his heart. He trembled, everything inside him turned at once to water but for the frozen stone where his heart sat. He kneeled, not trusting his legs to keep him standing, and looked upon the face of a dead god.