The Place of Stars and Bones Page 5

  As the hours wore on we slipped over the uniform waves, our pace steady. The sun rose behind the clouds and moved languidly across the sky. When it had again set and not even the fog could be seen be-yond the glow of the Boatman’s lantern, I turned to my new traveling companion.

  “I do not smell salt,” I said. “Do we ply a fresh-water lake or river?”

  “No,” replied the Boatman, “it is a sea of sorts, but the water is neither salt nor fresh. It is as lifeless as the plain from which you came.”

  I shrugged. “Some of the dead things on the plain seemed lively enough.”

  “And some of the dead things in this sea stir from time to time as well,” replied the Boatman. “But the water gives no life. It simply…is.”

  “Strange,” I mused, “water that does not give life. Perhaps this is why you’re so interested in the con-tents of my canteen?”

  “Perhaps,” said the Boatman.

  We then fell into a glaring silence punctuated only by the lapping of the waves against the prow. Around us the velvety darkness seemed to press closer.

  I looked skyward. No doubt the strangely brilliant stars shone down on us, but to the Boatman and me they remained hidden. Unseen, they rotated at their accustomed pace as we slipped across the waves with equal slowness. Around us the darkness was absolute. In the gloom I felt an unease begin to creep into the back of my mind. Like mist slipping beneath a door, it spread its icy tendrils through me. In vain I peered into the night hoping to see something, anything that would break this growing sense of disquiet. I did not need to wait for long.

  From out of that Stygian blackness, its contours illuminated by the orb set at the bow of the carrion boat, there loomed a great shell.

  It rose out of the fog; one moment hidden, the next towering above us. I leaned forward, eyes going wide, fingers grasping the gunwale. In response to my awe the Boatman gave out a single, humorless grunt.

  As we drew nearer the details of the great shell began to emerge. From our angle of approach it app-eared to be a giant spiral, a curving edifice that rose from the barren waters to tower over our tiny craft. Waves sloshed against its sides, lapping as though against a rocky shore. At its base could be seen the clinging skeletons of barnacles. Extending from the sweeping curve of the shell were spines, long as spears and tapered to wicked points. Some of these spines had been broken off, their jagged remains pro-truding at odd angles from the colorless mass of the shell. The effect was of an embattled rampart set with pikes, some shorn away in the course of sustained and brutal fighting. As we passed, the light of the bow lantern cast this uneven forest of spines in a flood of moving shadows. They danced amongst the shell’s upper ramparts creating an achromatic kaleidoscope of alternating light and dark.

  Mercifully I could detect no movement from be-neath the shell, no lifting of great tentacles or splash-ing of fins. The creature that had worn this carapace had long ago succumbed to the sterile, lifeless sea. Now it was but a floating monument, one set adrift on aimless tides.

  “Air,” said the Boatman.

  “Air?” I asked.

  “There is a great pocket of air trapped in the spiral of the shell,” said the Boatman. This is what keeps it afloat.”

  I nodded, watching the shadows as they danced over the surface of the shell. Just as the desiccated bodies heaped at the base of the carrion wall had stir-red something within me, so too did the great shell. Though I could not put my finger on it, the sight of the spines, like so many bristling spears, tugged at the back of my mind.

  As smoothly as we had come upon the remains of the great mollusk we slipped past. With our going, so too went the impression of spears and slaughter, of men locked in mortal combat. Soon the fog had en-veloped the great shell, leaving at first a silhouetted outline then nothing at all.

  “It was like the shells on the beach,” I said more to myself than my companion, “a spiral set with long spines.”

  “Those were very young when the waters turned,” replied the Boatman. “The one we have just passed had lived for many hundreds of years before it too succumbed.”

  Neither of us spoke again throughout the remain-der of that long night, simply drifted amidst our wan halo of light while the mist rolled silently by.

  When the new light of day presented us with another gray and featureless seascape I turned to the Boat-man, ready to inquire when this interminable voyage might come to an end. I did not get a chance to voice my query for at that moment the fog began to lift. It snaked upwards, reached longingly for the heavens with discarnate fingers. As it departed I noticed the tide had shifted and the waves ran towards a shoreline that stood dark against the horizon.

  I turned and watched as the distant shore drew nearer, all the while listening for the slightest hint of movement from my companion.

  “Not long now,” said the Boatman. I could hear the smack of his lips as he spoke.

  “No, not long,” I echoed.

  The sense of disquiet that had accompanied me since the encounter with the great shell redoubled and I shivered involuntarily. Out of the corner of my eye I peered at the Boatman, wondering if he had seen my momentary lapse. He made no indication one way or the other. Clenching my jaw against a second shudder I peered out to sea.

  The wave that lifted the boat, though slight, was wholly unexpected. I gripped the gunwale as the swell raised the small craft then dropped it again in a single, fluid motion. The Boatman held to the sides of his vessel with arms outspread, steadying himself. Freed of its master’s grasp the tiller knocked against the transom. At the bow, the single glowing orb jounced and swayed on its post. It sent odd shadows dancing across the face and arms of the armored man who sat opposite me. My stomach gave a small lurch as we slid into the trough at the base of the swell. The bow struck the crest of the wave that followed with a hollow thud. Water sloshed over the sides wetting my face with spray. Unconsciously I licked my lips. The water was tasteless, sterile; as utterly devoid of life as the Boatman had said. I reeled at the emptiness of the stuff, its complete lack of vitality. I spat, trying to rid my palate of the insipid liquid.

  As I leaned over the side gobbing into the water my eye caught a glimmer of pale sunlight. It played across an object that floated several fathoms below, winking back at me. I leaned closer to the surface of the water, squinting into the tenebrous depths. I won-dered if my eyes were playing tricks on me. The shape below drew nearer. With a cry I fell back from the thwart.

  A face, skeletal and gaunt, broke the surface of the lifeless sea. Skin hung in tatters from its brow and sunken cheeks, revealing the bone beneath. Its lips had peeled away, leaving it with a grin that extended nearly from ear to ear. It glared up at me with lidless, milky-white eyes. As it rose its mouth opened wide, stretching and splitting the decayed flesh along its jaw. A hand, equally as tattered, reached towards me, bony fingers clenching and unclenching.

  I scrambled backwards, lashing out with one booted foot. Bony fingers broke beneath my heel. I heard the Boatman laugh as I fumbled with the hilt of my sword. I freed the blade just as the drowned thing hauled itself over the gunwale.

  With a swift, lateral slash I hacked away the top of the corpse’s head. It staggered, its torso half out of the water, its arms hooked over the sides of the boat. I swatted at it with the flat of my blade, striking the side of the shorn off skull. The thing’s grip faltered and it slid back over the side.

  I looked to the Boatman, then out across the gen-tly rolling waves. Along their crests could be seen the tops of skulls and reaching, grasping hands. Corpses bobbed by the hundreds in the rising swells, their movements causing the sea to churn. They flounder-ed towards the longboat, packing themselves tightly around the small craft. I could hear their fingers scraping along its bottom, clawing at the over-lapping layers of bone. More faces; dead, putrefied remnants of familiar human features, emerged from the waves. Their jaws moved up and down in mute admon-ishment as the Boatman and I slid past.

  Slap
ping at outstretched hands with the flat of my blade I broke fingers and wrists, shattered forearms. Those that dared to raise their heads above the gun-wale I cut through, splitting their skulls. After untold ages spent beneath the waves the corpse’s skulls were soft and pliable. Heads broke apart with wet, squelch-ing cracks. Battered limbs hung from tattered strands of rubbery flesh, disjoined fingers flopping from side to side.

  While I hewed at the grasping wall of hands and teeth the Boatman continued to laugh. He laughed while his tattered cloak billowed around him, the wind that had taken the mists tugging at its folds.

  “They stir, from time to time,” said the Boatman from behind his mask of bone, “the dead things of the sea!”

  I cursed as the corpses jammed themselves against the sides of the boat. Soon it would be forced to a stop. Held in place by the grasping hands below we would be at the mercy of the dead.

  “The Rider,” I cried, severing an arm at the elbow, “she moved through the corpse-fields without waking them. Why is it these drowned things swarm us?”

  Ignoring my question the Boatman turned his smoldering black eyes upon me. “Give me the water!” he bellowed. “Give it to me or I will let them drag you into the sea.”

  I ceased the scything action of my sword arm. I rose to my feet ignoring the skeletal hands that drag-ged at my cloak and trousers. Hunched forward, his gauntleted hand on the tiller, the Boatman glared at me from behind his faceplate. I returned his stare.

  “Give me the canteen.”

  With one swift motion I drove my sword to the hilt in the bottom of the boat.

  The Boatman lurched forward arms outstretched. Before he could grab hold of my blade I wrenched it free and took a step backwards. With a cry of rage he raised his arm and made to backhand me with one spiked gauntlet. Again I swung downwards, piercing the interlocked ridges of bone.

  “No!” cried the Boatman.

  “Move us away!” I bellowed.

  The Boatman roared, his tattered cloak billowing about his shoulders. I took another step back, my calf catching against the thwart.

  “Fool!” shouted the Boatman. “Sink the boat and we both go to the bottom!”

  “Move us away!” I repeated, staggering to the side as the grasping carrion continued to tear at my gar-ments.

  Again the Boatman made to strike me and again I raised my sword. Water was beginning to puddle about our ankles. Another puncture and we would be inundated.

  My voice low and husky, my eyes fixed on those of the Boatman I said once more, “Move us away.”

  ──╥──

  five

  ──╨──

  The sun had moved past its zenith by the time the Boatman and I were close enough to make out the features of the shoreline. The boat rocked queasily back and forth, water sloshing against its sides. I lowered my gaze to the sections of cloak that had been stuffed into the holes I had punched in the belly of the craft. They seemed to be holding, little water having seeped through since the Boatman had affixed them. My traveling companion adjusted his grip on the tiller and angled the boat ever so slightly to port. I raised my eyes to the approaching shore and drew a deep breath.

  What stood before us was at once awe inspiring and terrible.

  It was a city, but unlike any I had ever seen. It was awash in cold light, the angular surfaces of the buil-dings broken into planes of alternating light and dark. The structures were clustered tightly together and set, one atop another, in innumerable and irregular tiers. These tiers extended to the water’s edge, falling into the waves. Narrow canals wedged between the loom-ing edifices disappeared into the shadowed interior of the metropolis. Along the sides of the canals were long piers that extended into the lifeless sea. Wavelets lapped at their pylons, muttering arrhythmically.

  The palatial structures themselves were fashioned in an architectural style I did not recognize. The lines of the stonework were at once angular and severe yet somehow fluid. Columns and arches meshed and in-tertwined, weaving around domes and spires placed at odd intervals. Each building seemed to run into the next, the whole winding its way endlessly back into the dark recesses of the city. It was as if the architects of this ancient metropolis had built and rebuilt it atop the ruins of itself. This labyrinthine collection of po-inted and lancet arches, flying buttresses, and ribbed vaults stretched on and on, climbing as it went. As the city rose it met the slowly writhing clouds that circled high above, vanishing into their depths. In this ancient place, past and present seemed to exist as one, each enmeshed within the other. To my eyes it app-eared that both were integral, neither able to exist without the other. The accumulated strata of an entire civilization seemed to glare back at me over the bar-ren water.

  As we drew nearer I saw that the buildings were comprised of a light brownish-gray stone, streaked and blackened with age. Along the façades of those structures that faced the water were carved reliefs, now weather-worn and barely discernable. What I could make out seemed to suggest carvings of human figures. The men and women in these sculptures were oddly proportioned and wound about one another in distorted and unnatural postures. The characters were without features, time having peeled them away. This made their grotesque dance all the more disquieting. At the sight of them I had to suppress a shudder.

  The Boatman took no notice of the effaced car-vings. He steered silently towards one of the long stone piers that protruded from the nearest of the great structures. With an ease doubtless born of innu-merable moorings, the Boatman slid his craft gently up to the pier and brought it to a halt. Whatever unseen force propelled the carrion boat abated and we sat wallowing beside the pylons.

  “Get out,” said the Boatman flatly.

  I did not waste words in response, simply got to my feet and stepped onto the pier. Beneath my boots the feel of the hard, unmoving stone felt strange. After hours spent rocking gently in the grisly boat I had become accustomed to its movements. The sta-tionary pier now felt somehow wrong.

  Turning to the Boatman I unslung my canteen and tossed it to him. He snatched it eagerly out of the air. I stood and watched as the he hastily uncorked the vessel and stripped off his helm. I was not surprised to note that the Boatman looked very much like his horse-borne counterpart. He was bald, his ears long and pointed, his teeth sharp and white. On his cheeks and scalp he bore roughly scrawled symbols not un-like those that marked the Rider.

  Closing his featureless black eyes the Boatman tipped back his head, lifted the canteen to his lips, and drank. Every drop of water the container held slid down his throat. He savored them as though tast-ing the rarest of vintages.

  “You ply a dead sea in a dead land…” I said.

  The Boatman opened his eyes and slowly lowered the canteen.

  “Here there is no food, no true water. How can you and the Rider exist in such a place? How can any-thing? Are you being punished for some transgression against a forgotten god or devil? Have you been set here to wander for eternity plagued by the needs of the flesh?”

  “No,” said the Boatman, “our lot is not punish-ment. I ply my trade as I have always done. I know nothing else; the Rider knows nothing else. Besides, our needs are not of the carnal, the corporeal.”

  I nodded.

  The Boatman did not return the gesture.

  “Thank you for my passage,” I said and turned to leave.

  The canteen clattered to the pier behind me. At the sound I spun about, my hand going to the hilt of my sword.

  With practiced indifference the Boatman replaced his helm then raised his eyes to mine. “This place will be your end,” he said. “What you will find is not what you seek.”

  We glared at one another for a moment, then he turned away. Placing one hand on the tiller he man-euvered his boat out onto the waves. I watched for a time as the luminous globe at its prow bobbed and swayed. I then returned my attention to the silent city.

  I moved along the edge of the canal, my footfalls echoing from the walls of ancient stone
that loomed overhead. Here, the already diffuse light was still dim-mer than it had been at the water’s edge. The walls and columns that rose into the featureless sky broke the daylight into slanting bars that failed to reach all but the highest of the façades. Beneath my boots the flagging was cracked and worn, though sturdy eno-ugh. As I walked I let my eyes wander about the peculiar architecture to either side of the canal. I could scarcely believe such strange buildings could stand, let alone for so long. I was at once glad and chagrined to have, at long last, something other than an empty plain or a featureless sea to look upon; even if that something was haunted by a sense of long forgotten foulness.

  Lining this narrow, watery boulevard were carved reliefs like those I had seen along the waterfront. These, better sheltered from the elements, displayed the details so obscured on the seaward walls. The dis-quiet I had felt at seeing the first of the carvings was amplified now that I could more clearly make out the figures depicted. The artists had rendered, in pain staking detail, scenes of unrest and riot. Occasionally there were depictions of torture and mutilation. Some of these were singular executions; others showed dis-memberments en mass. Such depravities, depicted on such a vast scale, made my stomach lurch. I won-dered if they were historical depictions or simply the fancy of some mad ruler now long in his tomb.

  Perhaps the subjects of these ordeals were human, perhaps not. The figures portrayed could very well have been of the same race as the Rider and the Boat-man. No matter their lineage, the unfortunates depic-ted unmistakably roiled in frozen agony, their suffer-ing immortalized in stone.

  I could only wonder at what manner of society would edify such cruelty? Whoever they had been, their demise would not have been mourned. As I skir-ted the canal, moving with as much hast as I dared, I was certainly glad of their absence.

  When I could no longer bear the sight of the reliefs I set about scanning the shadowy doorways and dark, twisting alleys that snaked away from the canal road. In their gloomy recesses I saw no rubbish or other debris. There was no movement, not even the scurrying of rodents or the twitching of corpses. This too made me glad. I did not care to meet more of the greedy, lurching dead―especially here, where they had buildings, archways, and shadows in which to hide.