(USFB): Twenty-Nine: Lurkers in the Dark

The deck lurched as the waves rolled the ship, the choppy surf matching the tumult aboard. Every board felt flimsy and poorly set beneath Kovarlin’s claw. It was all he could do to drag himself across the damp planks, trying to find his feet, to quash the fear and doubt of death, and to rally against his tormentor. His fur was crawling with lice stinging like terrible, fresh nettles while his mind swam as so many bodies pounding against the haul. The captain’s hat shed a broad shadow over him as he approached, the cane of a spear in his paw soon finding the softness just below the puma’s shoulder blade.

The shock of pain roused the man, evaporating the weary memories of a life he could nearly have forgotten had it not been so seared into his flesh. Flipping from his stomach to his tail, the puma searched the starry abyss of damp cobwebs chaining together filagreed fineries made to ornament the Goredrinker’s dominion. Or perhaps, like so many other ancient relics, the chains of once fine gold and silver and chalium, decorated with every colored stone under the sun and even those blessed by the moon, had served to further trap the timeless devil. Again, as he lay dormant, untold stories above his intended goal, the Goredrinker’s whispers echoed in his skull.

The promise was yet to be kept on either side, for that, Kovarlin could not fault the devil, but what illusions were being worked on his mind were another story. Though it was not the Goredrinker’s dark gift that brought days of forgotten splendor to mind, the ancient one could affect the body in the right manner to redirect the mind. As he lay on the cold masonry, forgotten to time and likely not tread in several centuries, even by the Goredrinker’s children, Kovarlin could feel his golden yesterdays as fresh as if they were still working away their time. Again, his mind tripped and stumbled back into the reveries of his time before the pact.

At the top sail, he sought and spotted the mass of platelike scales, mirroring the sun with radiant crystal refractions in every color. Kovarlin called down to the hookmen and the captain, who awaited their direction. Stellian was the only captain in the fleet to not serve as his own spotter, a weakness and liability. Had he been the keen eye any other man was, there would be no dealing with Kovarlin or any other of the known outcasts that filled out his crew. Yet, when a noble line is set between extinction and sinking low to rise again high, there is only one reasonable option. The ship shifted to cut off the extraordinary amphibian’s path as the puma slid down the loose network of ropes that led to the nest.

Striding across the deck to meet the captain, Kovarlin was stopped by a jovial lynx emerging from the quarter-deck. Under one arm was a folded skin carrying the delicate tools that would otherwise outfit a kitchen than the upper deck. In his free paw was a wineskin, still heavy with a burden of the sweet, honeyed drink Kovarlin found to be one of his foremost solaces on the seas. The other was he who held the draft.

“We ain’t got it aboard yet, Zhinel. Don’t you think we ought to wait for celebrations?”

“Is that what I bring,” he shook the sloshing skin over his head, “Celebration? I was under the impression that was saved for the night, libation during the day. You oughta have a drink. Too hot to hang yourself high without something sweet to wet your tongue.”

“And you’d know much about that?” a grin played across the puma’s features, both the expression and the details a far cry from what he had become.

Kovarlin was no fool, not delighted by fancies of meaningless natures, this he assured himself as he fought back to reality. Lamely, trying to distract from the better days that were themselves a distraction, he jabbed unkempt nails, set in bony digits, into weeping wounds. Like so many slots for cannons in the hull, his fingers comfortably nestled into the rifts in his arms. They were dry, deep, chasmious, and so dulled to injury they had not yet scabbed. He riggled his nail against the depths of his most recent opening and found nothing would trickle forth as though he were dead. It was not the first occasion.

Memories of the hunt, those great expeditions between the mainland and the isles burned brighter than the sun had all the day over his head. Kovarlin was in a wretched state, his maw dry as sand, the flesh and fur of his torso tightly coating his ribs, and his wits scorched to a cinder, the cinder itself reduced to nothingness. If he were to strike his own head off, alone in the deserted waste of his private prison, Kovarlin doubted the wound would warrant little more than a trickle of blood. He sunk into the sand once more after passing the length and width of his island, no larger than four row boats strung together to form a square. But as the sand began to obscure his features, his limbs still that dull bronze of any fellow he had ever known in the colonies or at home, as his mind entered the abstractions of the death dream, he couldn’t help but hear the boy’s voice calling his name.

“Zhinel!” Kovarlin called at the sound of moist steps on the rocks and sand bordering him from the sea. The night, painted in mauve hues, lit by the intensity of a full moon in the full exuberance of Summer’s light, faded and returned him to the desolate catacombs. There was no one beside him or even lingering in the nearest stretch of tunnel where he lay. All that he could see was the changed man who sat on his tail opposite him, his crude and unhealthy visage only visible through a shard of loosely hanging brass that had once been polished so acutely as to shine.

This person was not the puma he had known in cycles upon cycles ago when the wind wafted salt air through his tan fur. The sooty and dark figure was not the highly trained eye for the great ship Drecon. Those almost radiant amber eyes were not those that had located countless kherami swimming the depths. He lifted his paws to his face and etched through the fur with gritty nails paths that revealed a layer of grime over that former identity he once held fast to. And though the mark of his tribe, the bronze ring about his tail that clattered against the stone when he dared move it, had yet to break or fade, Kovarlin knew this was not the same man that had held Zhinel. Even if he could see in the depths of his mind that lynx who held to Drecon, who kept him from falling deep into the drink, and from fleeing his contract into the depths of the islands, alone, it did not mean he was there.

It was not the pacing of a young ship cook that sounded on the island but a creature not made for this time and hardly for the world it inhabited. The image in his mind was no longer as clear as Kovarlin remembered it, but the tentacle creature, standing nearly twice his height loomed over, standing only just out of reach. It knew he was dying, or would be before dawn, and in that voice, Kovarlin had come to know too well in the past few cycles, it made him an offer.

The deal was struck, and with it struck down were the men of Drecon and those of the Everian and a score from the Gherun. The Port of Chains, the docks of Silver Dove, that most prominent city of the Cutheran Islands, were razed in the night. There was no escape to the hillside, no flight on the waves, only fire and crimson tides. On land, Kovarlin stalked the streets, hardly in control of himself as he put one after another sailor to the blade. At the edge of his daggers, whores and hag-wives dispatched just as carelessly as their lovers. For a brief second, there was the thought of children, but rare was it for any to bring cubs so far from the mainland and even more unlikely for a family to begin in the untamed wilds of the frontier. The only child that came to mind was Stellian.

He had wept and pleaded when found in one of the many taverns that served as a buffer between the docks and the village coming about further inland. The place had been a construction of the land’s new inhabitants, unlike so much of the city found built in its current state. And like so much crafted from wood and clay by the paws of mortals, the building was fast aflame. The captain lay beneath one of the many burning beams that had burst and collapsed into the main hall. He was alone until the shade of the puma fell over him.

Kovarlin rocked his head back against the masonry and wished he had strength enough to crush it against that stone. To forget the blood on which the Goredrinker’s servants had dined, that painted his paws almost as much as the dark fur he now wore did. But to remove the deed from his memory would be to erase that one quiet hope. Stellian hadn’t known where Zhinel had gone, and Kovarlin couldn’t recall that too familiar face. Pai’gen would be the only one to help find the boy, now so many years removed from youth as Kovarlin was himself. But if the vaguest chance remain that he might be rediscovered, their paths crossed again, the puma would not surrender.

Attempting to find his feet again, Kovarlin struggled up from his tail, only to fall flat on his face. Not only did his legs feel heavily ladened with sleep, his mind was swimming in the emptiness that blood loss begot. Another attempt had him pressing up from the floor with his paws only for the faintest draft from the great below to topple him to the stonework in a heap of fervent desire. He lay on the floor as inert as anything else in the grand tomb, yet he could at least eye his salvation.

At the corner where the next gateway met the right wall was a sconce that jutted out with a hook for the missing lantern once held there. If the metal itself was insufficient to draw blood, the crooked pieces of ceramic around the empty slot would. The only trouble was climbing to that height, not beyond his reach and truly standing at about eye level with him, were Kovarlin able to stand. Though he had all of eternity to work his way to that point, for the Goredrinker had waited this long, why not continue prolonging it, the puma immediately began to work his fingers across the masonry. The walls this low had minor creases; Kovarlin knew he could find holds to pull himself up, but that was only as he focused.

With so little blood keeping him in the world, Kovarlin began not only seeing memory but all things laid bare before him. Like an all-consuming high, a brush with too many plants of psychedelic natures, the entire fabric of life seemed so simple and plain before the naked eye. Not only could he see Zhinel as he wanted to perceive him again, young and full of vigor, but he could see the age-ravaged face of that cook. His former flat belly had grown a touch wider, but not grotesquely so. The long stretches of fur down either side of his face were not graying but reaching that mature status, beset with beads of bright ruby. And those eyes, free once, hopeful then, were worn like seastone to a mere impression of what they once were. The sight drew Kovarlin down, but not in the sorrow of seeing youth decay but in knowing Zhinel had felt those cycles pass alone when he meant to be at the man’s side. It was as the weary thoughts of what should have been faded that a new voice sought the puma.

“…another Arkherun bumbling down the path, open the way, freeing that turncoat, and for what?” she asked an empty world, animous but still not without self, “How long must I wait?! Puppets dancing on strings for the Anzeri. This time we’ll make it different. If Pai’gen can be free, why can’t we?”

“Who there? Who do I hear?” his crackled lips hissed, seeking blindly into a sky crowded by too many stars. The lanterns of night danced about in odd rhythms overhead as he watched. At first, they seemed to ebb and flow like the tide and then to be buffeted by winds as any tree before a storm. But as he continued to stare into the glittering abyss, he found that the lights were forming together and becoming a semi-solid mass.

The horned head hung low enough to swallow Kovarlin up. Its call would have shattered bone if beyond a whisper, but without motion, the creature imparted its wisdom, “Huntsmen. I’ve searched for you, Huntsmen. But you’ve hidden yourself well in this forbidden realm. What does the Goredrinker promise that you can not grant yourself by your own paw?”

“Zhinel, the name that stirs my spirits and beats my heart.”

“Much to sacrifice in the name of one mortal, but I can think of more done for one. Yet, I believe it is time, now that you have come so close to death, to turn back. Life is not this. It is not digging yourself a spot beside a devil in his grave. Go forth from this place. I can grant my protection to you. You will live.”

The puma fought his throat to work, to scald the desert of his throat with warm spital, “What of Zhinel?”

“You might chance upon your Zhinel out in the world, but you not might. Certainly, I can’t think how you would find them here, so far away from the light of mortal lives.”

“Then I have no business with you, lady,” Kovarlin barely squeaked the last words to himself through a constricted windpipe. The voice had been far more pleasant than the one griping before it but offered little in the way of nurturing his calloused heart. With a wet tearing, the stars went out, and lapis bolts of lightning that proceeded unconsciousness came to his vision. Unlike any fish he had set to his line to catch a greater one, the hook did not hold Kovarlin’s weight, but his way forward opened all the same.