Tome of the Undergates - Sam Sykes

And yet, it’s not just about money, even though I know it ought to be. I suggest that whoever is reading this should season the next few lines with a bit of salt.

I want to find the demon. I want to find it and kill it. I want to find it and kill it and I don’t know why.

It’s far more likely that the thing will find and kill me first, I know, but all the same, there’s something inside me that makes me want to track down the beast and put my sword through it. I never got the chance to strike it directly, as something roiling around in my head reminds me often, and I have to know what will happen when I do. Between blinks, I know this is ridiculous logic: the thing took a spear through its belly and survived, likely my sword won’t do anything more than tickle it. And yet. . when I close my eyes, it all makes sense.

When I close my eyes, I hear a voice that is not my grandfather’s.

I suspect if I were to hear an actual voice, one of reason or even one threatening a stiff blow to the side of my head, I might be able to get these ideas out into the open and, upon hearing my own madness, be able to reject them. My companions haven’t been forthcoming, however, indicating that they’re either fine with the idea of chasing after demons or simply don’t want to talk to me.

It’s difficult to tell which.

Denaos slipped away shortly after our little meeting had concluded, citing the need for last indulgences while slinking off towards the cabin of one of the female passengers. Dreadaeleon, rife with ‘magic headaches’ or some manner of wizardly affliction decent people were never meant to know of, found some dark corner to sip tea in and pore over his book.

Asper, as far as I know, has been in various states of penance, meditation and prayer, tended to by Quillian. The Serrant clings to our priestess like a bloated tick; I suppose this isn’t unusual, given the symbiotic or parasitic relationship between their respective callings. All the same, I’m more than a little inclined, at times, to believe the rumours whispered about the Serrant, to give more than just a passing chuckle to the jokes Denaos makes about her.

Gariath, surprisingly, did deign to talk to me beyond grunted derisions of my race. He proved less than helpful in convincing me of the folly of chasing after demons, apparently sharing the sentiments of what may or may not be a symptom of insanity in my head. ‘If you’re scared, go sleep on a bed of urine,’ he suggested. ‘Very warm, I hear.’

In truth, I had hoped to speak to Kataria. She was. . not forthcoming.

I don’t suppose I can blame her, really. Only an hour or two after the Abysmyth was driven off, I managed to not only convince her that I was utterly mad, but savagely attack her and then persuade her to follow me on a chase after the damned thing. If this were any other situation, I’m sure I’d marvel at my ability to turn such a circumstance to advantage.

More than that, I needed to talk to her. I needed to tell her I wasn’t mad, so that she would confirm that. If I tell myself I’m not mad, it’s not reliable, since it could be the madness talking. But if she tells me I’m not mad, then it’s clear that I’m not because she’s just a savage shict, not mad, even if the race itself is more than a bit mad.

And beyond even that, I needed to tell her something. I don’t know what it was, though. Whenever I close my eyes to think of it, I keep hearing the logic, the voice, the need to go after the demon and kill it. All I can think of to say to her is something about how sweaty she is.

In fact, I did try to tell her. Her response was a shrug, a roll onto her side and a profoundly decisive breaking of wind in my general direction. As one might imagine, negotiations were promptly concluded afterwards.

The sun is beginning to rise now. It strikes me that I should attempt to get at least an hour’s sleep. It strikes me as odd that I’m yearning for conversation. My grandfather used to tell me that the moments before an honest killing were tense, silent, no one able to talk, eat or sleep. Maybe I want to alleviate that tension by talking to someone, anyone. Maybe I want them to tell me I’m doing the right thing by going off to chase demons. Maybe I just want to hear something other than the waves.

Maybe I want to stop hearing voices when I close my eyes.

The crew is emerging on deck. Time is short. I’ll write later, presuming survival.

Hope is not advised.

Ten

Silver slivers of the dawn crept through the blinds like spectres, casting ghostly hues on the sheets. Denaos glanced upwards at the shuttered window with disinterest, awaiting the late-dawning sun. Nights without sleep were as common to him as a waking day was.

He had no right to place his feet down on the wood, to rub his eyes and stifle a yawn behind clenched teeth. That sort of thing was reserved for people who had done hard work and slept well, the gestures largely the last appreciation between a man and his bed before he readily faced the dawn like a soldier gallantly marching to battle. Still, he admitted to himself, acting as though he had slept well and was heading to brighter days was one of his lesser lies, hardly worth losing sleeplessness over.

Something rustled in the sheets next to him and he glanced sideways at the nude woman. The sheets hugged her slender body as she blissfully dozed, oblivious to the presence of him or the rising dawn.

She looked peaceful in her slumber. She had met him with suspicion when he had pretended to stumble, lost, through her door late last evening, coming close to casting him out with the coaxing of a bottle of inexpensive wine cracked against his skull. Now, all traces of scorn were vanished from her stately, well-nourished features, instead bearing the expression of something akin to a sated lioness.

Yes, he smiled to himself, that’s a rather good metaphor. I like that one.

Negotiating his way into her bed hadn’t been difficult; it never was. It hadn’t taken much but a few false tears shed for his fallen comrades whose names he couldn’t remember out of shock to convince her to pour him a glass of the red. The best lies usually began with tears, he knew, and from there it was only a stiff, resolute inhale to convince her of a wound past his brave, stoic shell that was in need of carnal healing.

He eyed the empty bottle on her bureau, regarding the label: Jaharlan Crimson. A lesser wine from a race who regarded lesser wines with all the reverence they did lesser Gods. To think, he scolded himself, if I had recited a bit of poetry, she’d probably have given me some of the expensive stuff.

That, at least, might have afforded him the opportunity to pass out, to sleep, perchance to slumber right through the call to leave, and a decent excuse not to follow his companions into death. The expensive stuff, at least, might have given him the opportunity for a dreamless, blissful emptiness behind his eyelids.

Lesser wine was his milk. He took it with bread and stew and it had long since failed to do anything but fill his belly and his bladder. Lesser wine never allowed him to sleep.

He rubbed his eyes again, hoping to lower his hands and find an inviting pillow beneath him. He was still awake, eyes still open. He attempted to convince himself that his insomnia was due to the events that had occurred yesterday.

After all, who could sleep after agreeing to chase a beast that drowned men on dry land? Certainly not Denaos, the average man, the voice of reason amidst the savage, monstrous, insane, zealous and blasphemous. Denaos needed time to digest such horrors, time in bed with pleasurable company and expensive stuff. It could hardly be Denaos’s fault that he couldn’t sleep.

Denaos told himself this. Denaos did not believe it.

The slivers of light brightened, seeping through the shutters to bathe the woman in muted light. He saw her, then, without the haze of wine or the fleeting euphoria of protrusions in orifices. She was a sculpture, her skin flawless, her hair so dark as to swallow the light as it crept over her.

He blinked. For the briefest of moments the woman was not the merchant who had scorned him previously. For the briefest of moments she was someone else, someone he had once known. He saw her waking as if she were a stranger, rolling over to bat large, dark eyes at him, a smile of contentment upon her face.

‘Good morning, tall man,’ he imagined her saying.

He blinked. In the span of his eyelid shutting and opening, he saw her once more, now still and lifeless upon crimson-stained sheets, eyes closed so peacefully one might never have noticed the gaping hole in her throat. .

Stop it, he told himself, STOP IT!

Denaos shut his eyes tightly and breathed deeply. The image lingered in his mind like a tumour, growing ever more vivid with each breath he took. Silently, he held his breath, making not a word or sound until he felt his lungs were ready to burst.

When he opened his eyes, she lay there: whole, unsullied, breathing softly.

He slid out of her bed and crept to the crumpled black heap that was his clothes, and felt a chill come over his naked legs. It would be so easy, he thought, to stay here, to let them go and die on their own. It would be easy to lie here beside her. .

He looked at her once more, resisting the urge to blink.

Even as his eyes strained to keep open, he could see her hand on the space he had recently lain upon. She had all her fingers. Without blinking, he saw the red stumps on large, hairy hands. Without blinking, he saw the missing digits rolling about on the floor beside a pair of quivering, glistening globs in a pool of brackish bile. Without blinking, he saw a bearded face, lips cracked and gaping, pleas forced through vomit.

He still dared not close his eyes, nor did he dare return to her bed. It was the scent of linen that was his allergy, spurring images to his mind he never wished to see, those images bringing forth other images. He should be lucky to only recall last night’s other accomplishment in such fleeting visions. He should be lucky to escape the nightmare of sheets before he was tempted to sleep.

Quietly, cannily, he slid into his trousers. She would be furious when she awoke, he knew, to find him absent. By then, he would be gone, possibly drowned, possibly with his head bitten off by some horrible monstrosity.

The door shut quietly. The woman turned in her bed, grasping at a space on her mattress that bore no depression or muss of sheets, no evidence that anyone had ever been there.

The sun was the dominion of Talanas.

This, Asper knew, was certain. It was the Healer’s greatest gift to mankind, the gate through which He had entered and left the waking, mortal world. Talanas frowned upon no human, cursed no follower of another God; He was the Giver, dispensing His purification freely and without judgement. So, too, was the sun an indiscriminate and generous benefactor of humanity.