Volcanic Rituals

 

Jaya plunged down into the black waters, surrounded by the floating ruin of shattered wood and torn bodies.  She tried to swim, but her armor dragged at her, her boots filling with water and pulling her deeper no matter how she kicked for the light.  Looking up, she saw the surface crossed by the shadows of the ship’s hulls, the darting shapes of sharks as they tore at the wounded struggling in the deep.

She fought the straps on her shoulder-guards, shrugged them off, and then she cut the leather fastenings of her breastplate with her long dagger.  Her sword was gone, lost in the depths, and she had no time to mourn the loss.  She kicked for the surface, sliding her boots off, shedding all the belts and armor that had guarded her, but would kill her now if she did not set herself free of it.

Naked, she reached the surface and gasped for breath.  The waves were steep, and the wind was rising.  The Mordani warship was a flaming wreck sliding away from her, leaving a scatter of wreckage in its wake.  Smoke boiled up, filling the sky and cutting out the sun.  Everything was lost in a terrible haze that smelled of burning flesh, and though she looked for the Unjarah, she could see nothing.

A wave slapped her down and she had to fight back to the surface.  She clung to her dagger and gasped, caught a drifting piece of splintered wood, hung on to it as it rode up the face of a wave and the cresting top splashed her in the face.  She hung on, realizing she had to get away from here, from the spreading stain of blood and death that would bring the sharks and other sea-scavengers.  She had to get away from where her enemies would be looking for her.  She had escaped alive, but if they caught her, death would not be swift.

A tall fin knifed through the water near her, and she saw the pale shape of the beast as it slid past, held in the body of the rising wave as though it were on the other side of a glassine wall.  She saw the black, black eye, and she knew it regarded her.  She felt the cold glance, and she felt the indifference of the shark, like a cold wind.  She had lost the will of the gods, somewhere in her crusade, and she must have it back.

She crawled onto the shard of deck planking, and she drove her dagger into the wood and held onto the hilt as the seas grew heavier and the winds came howling down through the islands.  The smell of smoke and death was heavy, and she clung grimly to her makeshift raft.  Take me where I must go, she said silently, looking to the sky over her head and the dark waters around her.  Take me where I am meant to be.

o0o

Night fell, and she rode the seas blindly all through the dark.  Clouds hid the moon, and there was only a silvery glow to mark the sky as she was heaved up and down by the waves.  Sea creatures moved under her, sending forth pulsing blue and green light.  She heard breakers in the dark and knew she must be near to shoals or a shore, but she could not see anything, and in the heavy waves she could do nothing to control her direction.  She only hung on and listened, watched, and waited.

Dawn touched the sky with silver, and she saw she was near to a blade of jagged cliffs that rose from the waters in a steep ridge.  Spray exploded from the foot of the cliffside, filling the air with mist.  She heard the first cries of seabirds as they rose from the black rocks into the morning air.

The sun rose higher, illuminating the sky, and she saw towers of cloud above basalt cliffs that rose on either side.  The peaks were sharp as swords and gleamed in the dawn, and then she knew where she must be.  The smell of burning only affirmed that she was drawing near to the ruins of Kungai.  Where land met sea in a narrow strait, there had been an ancient place of her people from before their fall.  Her ancestors, too, had lost the way of the gods, and so the mountains rose up and poured molten fire down upon the city and purged it of life.  The earth gave way and sank the ruins into the waters, where they still stood in the time of the grandfathers, a warning that had not been heeded.

The seas were calming, and the current pulled her southward.  Ahead she saw the black cliffs loom higher, and the seaway narrow.  Steam boiled from the waters, and she knew fire still seethed far below.  Giant shellfish clung to the rocks in the shallows, opening their mouths to gasp when the waters receded after each wave.  She saw crabs as big as horses move in the rocky pools, and here and there the shape of a ruin was still visible beneath the salt deposited by the waters and the barnacles that encrusted everything like black teeth.

She sensed movement before she saw it.  Something slid into the waters to one side and she turned her head, just missed seeing it.  She saw whorls and currents in the water that were not from wave or current.  She saw the brutal shores of black glass strewn with bones, and she knew something hunted here.  Something that was not men moved and waited in the black waters.

Jaya wrenched her dagger from the wood and held it ready, watching for anything drawing near.  Whatever fate stalked her now, she would meet it with steel, and all the strength that still remained to her.  If it was the will of the gods that she die in this place, then she would die.  But if she was given a path back to her war, she would cut her way through.

She saw the shadow beneath the surface and then a hard grasp closed on her leg and pulled her savagely beneath the waters.  She saw glowing eyes and teeth like silver, and she stabbed viciously at the half-seen form, felt the blade dig into flesh and a bloom of blood in the dark waters.  A claw slashed at her, drawing her own blood, and then she burst back into the air, gasping for breath.

More shapes converged on her, and she breathed deep and then dove beneath, her only weapon poised in her good right hand.  Her muscles were sore, her wounds ached, and she was so hungry she might have gladly eaten anything that came to hand, and yet she would not simply let them drag her down.

They tried.  Clawed hands closed on her skin, digging furrows through her flesh, and by brute strength they pulled her under in a cloud of blood.  Jaya fought them furiously, stabbing and slashing at them, cutting through scaled meat, stabbing out eyes, ramming her blade in through their mouths until black ichor vomited out.

They went deep, the pressure of the water squeezing down on her until her pulse throbbed in her temples.  She cut her way free and kicked upward for the surface.  When she broke the water she gasped while a wave hurled her against a black glass stone and she clawed her way up, using her dagger as a spike to cling to the smooth rock until the tip snapped off.

She turned at bay, her back to the stone, gasping for air, holding her broken blade ready while the dark shapes in the water swirled closer and blood ran over her skin in trickling trails.  Something was caught on her neck, and she groped for it, found it was the amulet she had worn almost forgotten for years now.  The shark tooth enclosed by the ring of golden metal that never corroded or dimmed on the chain that never broke.

The things that pursued her came up from the water, wading for her out of the seething waves.  They were tall things shaped roughly like men, with long arms and legs, tall crested skulls, and wide, black eyes that seemed to see everything and nothing.  They were almost the same as those sea men she had encountered long ago, yet they were larger and their scales were more jagged and barbed.  These carried no weapons and wore no armor.  They were like a ruder, more primitive offshoot of the same race.

They came for her.  Six, ten, more swimming in the waters close to land but not showing themselves.  She drew the amulet off her neck and held it up so the sun caught it, thrust it ahead of her with desperation, wondering if it would give them pause, or would drive them into some killing frenzy.  The tooth swung on the end of the chain, such a small thing she wondered if they would even see it.

They closed on her, hands and mouths grasping, their blank eyes glistening with the half-light that seeped down through the clouds of mist and steam.  The amulet gleamed, and they stopped, looking at it.  One of them crept closer and she thrust out her arm as though in warding, but the creature only hunched over and reached out one single talon and touched the swinging tooth, as though uncertain it was real.

It drew back and made a long, low cry – like a howl – and then two of the others leaped into the water and howled as well.  Jaya saw the surface of the water ripple with the force of their cries, and she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her.  She was exhausted, wounded, hungry.  She had lost blood, and she was covered with pain.  She felt how thin her strength had become, and she wavered there on the slippery rock.

When they came for her again, she could barely fight them.  Her notched and broken dagger blade turned on their scaled flesh, and they grasped her by her arms and legs and lifted her up.  She cried out, twisting in their grip, giving voice to her own howls, but they did not release her.  She felt herself borne up by scaled, clawed hands, and then darkness swam around her like a sea within her skull.

o0o

She woke to the sensation of warmth, and she stirred, found she was lying in a tidal pool with warm water bubbling up from below her.  It was hot, but not burning, and she groaned as she felt it soothe her pains and sore muscles.

Jaya sat up and could not see very much of where she was, for the air was thick with metallic-tasting steam, the rocks heavy with deposited rime and encrusted by barnacles.  Her broken dagger was gone, and all that she wore was the blood that stained her skin, and the amulet she still bore around her neck.  The shallows of the pool were scattered with shellfish that had been slow-cooked in the hot water, and she quickly seized them up and cracked them open on the hard stone so she could gouge out the tender meats inside and devour them.  She forced herself not to gorge, but to eat with measured swallows so she would not make herself sick.

The quick meal revived her more than she would have expected, and she stood up in the warm water, using handfuls to rinse the blood from her body.  She was surrounded by clouds of steam and she heard the roiling of the sea close by.  Black pillars of iron basalt reared up from the haze like ruins of some ancient city, and she blinked as she realized that was what they were.  She turned and looked behind her, saw a wrecked palace that reared up against the cliffs.  It was shrouded in mist and draped with trails of dried lava, but she could see in the remains that it had been a place built by her people in another age.

She heard a sound like rattling bones, and as she looked a figure emerged from the mist.  It was one of the sea-creatures draped in a coat of blackened shells woven upon a robe of dried seaweed, and it rattled as it moved.  She saw it come forward, leaning upon a staff made from the jawbone of some immense fish, and it stood there and looked down at her with its hollow eyes.  It held out a hand and beckoned to her, and she stood from the steaming pool and went toward it.

She climbed what had been a stair before the fall of the city, and then onto a wide plaza that led to the door of the palace, the archway soaring high above.  She saw statues that had been made from the bitter black stone and now were half-encased in the white rime of the sea spray and the alchemical mist that seethed up from pools below them.  Spines of frozen lava hung down like teeth in a maw, and she stood there, amazed, looking on a place that had been a ruin before her people had been driven from their homeland.  The legends of Kungai were ancient, and they were told in a way that seemed to hide any deeper meaning.  She sensed a black current beneath the surface, something cold and unspeakable.

The figure led her onward, to the very threshold of the ruined palace, and there it stood before a statue that was not so corroded and shrouded as the others.  It was the figure of a man, his face almost blank with time, his helm a crested shape upon his head, and she saw it had once been adorned with true feathers.  He held up one hand in a gesture she could not be certain of for a moment, but then she saw that he had his fingers curled to hold a weapon high.

There was nothing in his hand now, and she looked at the silent sea-creature in question.  He pointed to the statue, and then traced in the air the shape of a long haft topped by a blade – a spear.  Jaya looked and wondered at the name of this lost king.  The stories had never spoken of a name, only that the city had been accursed and cast down, and nothing else was told.

The creature turned away and beckoned her again, led her through pillars of mist that poured from cracks in the black rock and down a wide stair that had once been a soaring accomplishment of stonework, but was now covered in encrusted white salt and cracked from the subsidence of the land over long ages.  He went to the wall of the cliff and placed his hand there, traced the carvings in the stone, also worn and broken, yet she could still read them.

Here were shapes of the lords of Kungai.  She saw processions of warriors and mountains of tribute and plunder carried through the streets of the city in the days of its glory.  She saw the noble forms of the kings and queens, of the lords and their retinues as they stood proudly upon the palisades and the colonnades of the palace, their features stern and austere with dignity.

The shell coat rattled as the figure led her down the steps, tracing the path of the carvings that showed the passing ages.  She saw wars that had been forgotten, the sack of cities that had vanished with time, the sea filled with warships and the burning wrecks of enemies.

There was a great rift in the black cliff, and the carving was obliterated save for crude scratchings upon the broken stone, and when they had passed the split the work was different, reflecting a ruder, more primitive artistry.  She saw the city in ruins, the towers broken and the sea on fire.  She saw the grand fleet of warships sunken into the depths, wrecked and forgotten, their treasures spilled forth upon the rivers of lava that poured in the deep.

Jaya saw the survivors among the people of Kungai forced to live in the wreckage of their once-proud city, saw them turn to fishermen and raiders, saw them dive into the waves to try and gather the remains of their wealth and fail.  The sharks fed on them, and the coiling shape etched on the stone could only be one of the sea-dragons of old – the children of Nagai, the Dragon-God.  The guardian of the dead.  She saw him coiled around the bones of the fallen in the deeps, and there was etched the shape of the spear taken from the idol of the king.

The people of Kungai fell into savagery, and then they changed.  She saw their workmanship decay as their forms degenerated, and then she stopped and realized what she was seeing.  She looked at her monstrous companion, and she knew he was her kindred.  That these sea-monsters who walked like men had once been men.  Had once been the lords of the city of Kungai, which grew too proud and was accursed by the gods.  She knew why her people had never told her this tale, and why it had been forgotten.  She knew why her people had fled when their empire fell, and why they denied the names of the gods.  They had feared that this fate would overcome them as well.  The Tau’ta had feared that the gods would make monsters of them in punishment for their sins.

The stair ended in a broken edge, and she looked down into a swirling pool that seemed to boil, steam rising from it and hanging like nightmare shapes in the air.  The basalt rim was layered with white jagged salt like teeth and the smell in the air was acrid and harsh.  She remembered the image of the sea-dragon coiled beneath the waves, dreaming upon the treasures of a lost age, and she knew what lay under that dark surface.

Her guide pointed his staff downward, and he made a rude, guttural sound that could have been a word, but she could not say.  She looked at him with sudden grief in her, and she touched his arm and nodded.  The people of the city had gone away, leaving only a few faithful here to guard this place, to try and remember what they had been, to wait for a day of deliverance from their curse.  For a turn of the tide.

“The spear,” she said.  “The spear of the king.”  She saw a flicker of understanding on the monstrous face before her, and she nodded.  “Yes.  Yes I will bring it back.”  She stepped close to the sheer edge, looked down into the roiling waters, and then she leaped high and knifed down, diving like a spear herself toward the darkness below.

o0o

Jaya dove as cleanly as she ever had when she was young, learning on the high cliffs of her home.  She remembered seeing the sun play on the azure waters as she plunged down, holding her breath and steeling herself against the impact.  To dive, one had to master fear and hold stiff and stay bent on the water below.  It took no time, and yet it passed through an eternity before it ended.

She struck hard and plunged in deep, spread her hands to push herself downward.  It was dark, and the water was hot, bubbles rushing up from glowing vents below.  She saw the gleam of gold, and as she swam deeper, she saw the ridges and arch of bone encrusted with the salt of the sea.  A monstrous form spread out across the bottom of the pool, and the glow of the open volcanic rents gave light even as they heated the water.

It was the sea-dragon, long dead and now reduced to bone.  The seemingly endless spine and the array of white ribs lay draped over the stone, and there Jaya saw the glow of gold in the dark.  Ships had been sunk in this place, and she saw the ruins of them, the beams splintered and festooned with barnacles and crawling black crabs.  The ancient hulls had split open and spilled forth a tide of wealth, bellies full of gold slit open and left to pour out into the sea.  The silver and bronze had corroded into knots of black decay, but the gold was still alive with the gleam of avarice.

Jaya swam lower, seeing mounds of golden beads, chains, rings, and cups.  She saw jewels as big as her fists and pearls like black fruit on the bottom of the pool.  They were not what she sought, and she passed them all by.  She followed the trail of bones across the dark world beneath the water, feeling the need for air beginning to press inside her chest.  She took hold of the ribs and pulled herself forward through the hot water until she saw the massive skull ahead of her, fanged jaws open and eyesockets black as night.

The spear was embedded in the heavy bone of the skull, the haft and blade covered with brine deposits and jagged barnacles.  Jaya did not hesitate, and she seized it in both hands and wrenched at it.  It was fixed so deeply in the ironlike bone that she felt not the slightest give, so she set her feet on the skull and pried it to the side, back, and again, until she felt it move.

Her vision began to blur with the oppressive heat and the dragging need for breath that weighed her down like a stone in her chest.  She ground her teeth and clenched her hands tightly on the spear-haft, feeling the barnacles bite into her skin as she pulled with everything she possessed, at last ripping the spear free.

She kicked for the surface with desperate speed, fighting against the clawing need to draw breath.  The way back seemed longer and deeper than the dive had been, and she kept her jaws clamped shut, refusing to breathe until she broke the surface and gasped tearingly for air.  She looked up and saw her guide standing close by upon a promontory of black stone, and she lifted up the spear to show it.  Then she felt a surge of water beneath her, and the waves turned black.

Jaya turned and kicked for the rocky shore as the waters heaved and a great saurian head erupted from the deeps.  It was half the size of the skeleton beneath, but she could see it was the same breed.  Alive, it was massive and armored with spined scales, the head frilled with fins and crests, golden eyes blazing from the shadows of its spiked brows.  It opened a huge mouth and roared, the sound of it shaking the water, sweet breath whistling past teeth like swords.

A wave washed over her and pushed her back as the beast began to uncoil from the deeps, an endless seething of black scaled flesh.  A sea-dragon out of the old days, vast and terrible.  Jaya wondered if it could boil the waters as the stories told, if it could breathe out venom and swallow everything into a whirlpool that would devour ships.

She was washed against the rocks and climbed out, naked and with the sea-encrusted spear her only weapon.  Desperate to clean the edge of the steel, she struck it against the rocks and the basalt split apart as a chime like ringing iron hammered out and echoed from the cliffs.  The salt-rime shattered from the blade of the spear and the barnacles shivered into nothing, and then she held it in her hands and looked on the weapon of her ancient people.

The blade was as long as her forearm and the steel carried a deep green tint.  The edge was marked by the jagged temper mark, and the face of it was etched with swirling sigils that called forth the memory of the sea.  The haft as well was made from the same green steel, coiled and gleaming as if it were carved from bone.

The dragon reared up, venom running from its jaws, and Jaya held up the spear before her like a talisman.  “Nagai!  Sea-boiler!  I invoke you!”  She struck the haft of the spear on the stone and it rang again, the song coursing through her bones and her teeth.  The dragon drew back, hissing and flinching from the sound, and Jaya laughed, feeling free from the pain of wounds and despair for the first time in days.  She struck the spear again upon the black stone and the ringing filled the lagoon and shivered from the walls of the cliffs that rose above.  The dragon roared in answer, and then it bowed down before her.