Chapter Two #2
with bolts of frost, who had died with a look of shock and agony on her face.
Her glassy feline eyes seemed to reflect his stare.
Isaac felt a twist in his gut, turning his head away.
By now, Zaria was standing over him again, her tall figure
blocking away the sun. She held a waterskin in her hand. “Open wide.”
Isaac opened his mouth.
She squatted down and began to pour. At first, Isaac drank
greedily, the sensation of cool water on his tongue almost indescribable in its
pleasure, but Zaria never slowed her pouring, and he couldn’t swallow fast
enough. Soon, he was nearly choking on the water, some of it spilling on his
face and chest. She continued to pour even when he bent over to cough and gasp.
By the time the skin was empty, more of it had landed on his robes than his
mouth, and the amount he had swallowed only managed to blunt his thirst.
Zaria tossed the empty skin over her shoulder. “Well, now. I
hope we’re bathed and happy. If that’s all, let’s return to business.”
Isaac coughed, trying to lick more droplets from his
scraggly beard.
Zaria held out a piece of paper. “What does this say?”
It was the letter his uncle had written him just before the
start of his journey. He had not been able to send Isaac off personally, having
to attend to urgent business elsewhere, but the letter was there to wish him
well and grant him safe passage with the special design of its wax seal. It
contained references to his mission, where he came from, and the places he was
to go. Over the days of travel, Isaac had read it many times.
He kept his expression calm. “It’s written in the common
language.”
The hyena moved the paper closer to his face. “I understand
that, love. What does it say?”
He stared back at her for a moment, trying to understand the
problem, before it suddenly dawned on him. “Oh. You’re illiterate.” He couldn’t
help but chuckle to himself. “Of course you are. I don’t know why I expected—”
Her jaw flashed toward his throat. Isaac squirmed against
the cannon hole, feeling an entire maw’s worth of teeth wrapping around his
neck, like scissors to paper. His heart pounded against her canines and
incisors. For a moment, her jaw seemed to tense, holding a fearsome pressure on
his skin, only for the rest of her head to pull slightly away, leaving her nose
below his chin and her breath caressing the front of his jugular, like a gentle
promise.
This close to him, he could smell a distinctive musk, one
that suggested she had not bathed for several days. It worsened the dizziness
in his head.
“Don’t make this hard,” she said. “I’d hate to leave you for
the birds.”
Above the furry ears tickling at his nose, Isaac could see
buzzards already circling the air, high above the wreckage. He knew, from his
reading, that vultures tended to eat the eyes of the dead first, or otherwise
tear their way through the soft lining of the anus. He had studied enough
diagrams to know their beaks were very sharp.
Sometimes, the birds did not bother to wait until their meal
was dead.
“I’ll spin you a yarn,” Zaria said, her hot breath on his
skin, “and tell me if I’m wrong.” She cleared her throat. “That gaudy little
seal comes from the desk of some equally gaudy mage, probably robed and such,
granting the bearer diplomatic passage. The curly-cues and fancy letterin’ tell me that this mage is probably so wizened
that he jerks himself to sigils in his spare time. Most of all, the sweaty
fingerprints on the margin suggest you’ve pawed over this parchment like a
special letter from your missus.”
Isaac watched the buzzards circle overhead, trying not to
breathe.
Something hot and wet touched his throat. He realized, all
at once, that Zaria was dragging her tongue across his neck. Like many
predators, she had meat-stripping barbs on her tongue, which were now roughly
scarping over his skin. The feeling was painful, wet, and oddly tingling. He
kicked his legs through the sand, trying to strike her away, but he was pressed
into the section of hull by the bulk of her body, which gave him no leverage to
spare.
Slowly, she pulled away, taking her time of things. A clawed
hand gripped his shoulder. A pair of brown, slitted eyes met his own. He could
see now, more than ever, that the scar on her nose was deep, old, and wicked.
“Am I hittin’ the mark, Isaac?”
Isaac tried to catch his breath, feeling that the heat on
his face was not solely due to burns.
“I’ll ask you again,” she said, holding up his uncle’s
letter. “And I promise, this is the last time I’ll use my words. Do we
understand each other?”
Isaac nodded, gathering himself.
“What does this say?”
Isaac looked at the letter, back at her, and said: “Fuck
off.”
She didn’t react. For a long moment, she kept looking into
his eyes, searching for any hint of weakness. Isaac gathered the last of his
strength and defiantly met her gaze, knowing that the slightest falter would be
his last. All at once, she began to snigger. The laughter continued building in
strength until she was bent over, leaning a hand on his thigh, cackling with
her entire body. It was loud and whooping and completely like an animal.
Isaac took a deep breath, his throat still noticeably wet.
He tried to think of his father.
“Can I tell you something, Isaac?” Zaria asked, pulling herself
straight. Her snout quirked with a repressed grin. “I think we’ll make a fine
team, you and I.”
“Excuse me?”
She stood up, pacing over to his upturned pack. “Well, I may
not have had the good fortune of education, but I do know a
good fortune when I see one.” She picked up a parchment lying on the ground,
shaking the sand off.
A chill went down Isaac’s spine when he recognized his own
map, complete with all his markings and notes and gathered thoughts. Zaria
parsed over the symbols like she was perfectly capable of taking their measure.
It occurred to him that a pirate would have a very good cause for learning how
to navigate by chart.
It was already over. She knew where he was going.
Zaria strolled back to him, squatting down till she was only
slightly above him. “What’s this, Isaac?”
“I do believe that’s a piece of paper.”
“Funny. I think it’s a treasure map. See?” She pointed at
the large X that denoted his destination. “X marks the spot. Classic
cartography. Even mages with silver spoons up their arse like that one,
apparently.” She paused. “No offense.”
“Much taken,” Isaac said.
“Well, it just so happens I know this place. Most pirates
do.” She adopted a creeping, gravelly voice. “The lair of an ancient sorceress,
carved into the earth from the buried corpse of a giant, the smell of death so
pungent it touches the fabric of your soul. They say that anyone who ventures
into the mouth of this tomb has their essence consumed by demons, their spirit
twisted into madness by eternal torture.” She glanced down at the map, then
back at him. When she spoke again, her voice was at a regular alto pitch. “You
believe in them old myths, Isaac?”
Isaac grimaced. “Not all of them are wives’ tales.”
“Ah,” she answered. “Well, they also say that old sorceress
left behind treasures not seen by any species for thousands of years. Gems and
goblets of gold, all glitterin’ in the dark, more
than ten skimmers could carry. You believe that old myth, too?”
He swallowed.
Zaria pressed a claw into the X. “Let me spin another yarn.
See, I think you were sent out by some mage academy or what have you to claim
that treasure, and maybe discover a few evil magics along the way, or whatever
nasty business the lords of the land are brewin’ up
for their schemes. A group of bandits may stand no chance against the horrors
that lurk in them halls, but a mage like you? Someone who’s quite obviously
read his weight in ancient books?” She looked him up and down. “I bet you could
take me right down to that horde of gold.”
“No,” Isaac said, quietly.
“No, you can’t? Or, no, you won’t?”
“No. I—” He sighed. “I’m trying to rescue my father.”
She tilted her head. “Is he some aspiring weapon of
destruction, like yourself?”
“He was part of the Diet of Nine. One of the strongest
transmutation experts on the continent. He went out to the tomb before I was
born to make contact with that very same sorceress,
who, I assure you, is very real. The Diet had reason to believe she was still
alive, sustaining herself by the power of necromancy.”
“Ain’t that death magic illegal?”
“It’s . . . a complex discipline. There are practical
applications, if you follow the Diet’s mandate, but stealing soul energy from
the dead, corrupting the very essence of a person? That is a
capital crime. My father had orders to kill the sorceress if her presence there
was confirmed.” Isaac looked away. “He never returned. Something trapped him
down in the tomb of the colossus. The only reason we know he’s not dead was a
divination of his soul energy, using advanced machines.”
“Soul magic’s just a thing you can do, is it?”
“It’s highly experimental. Look, I have spent my life
training with my uncle—my father’s brother—in order to rescue him from that
tomb. Ever since I was able to speak, that has been my purpose. That is why I’m
walking across this wasteland of a desert, risking death by wyrms and pirates.
I want to save my father from whatever evil thing is holding him down there.”
Zaria blinked. She almost spoke, then seemed to think better
of it. For a small span of time, she sat on her haunches, watching him
carefully.
Isaac shrugged through his restraints. “Was that a good
enough reason for you?”
“As far as they go, sure.” She was looking at him
differently now. “Still haven’t answered my question about the treasure.”
“I doubt it’s quite as big as you’ve heard, but . . . yes.
It’s real.”
She leaned in. “It’s real? Truly?”
“The Diet of Nine thinks it is.”
“Free to claim, then?”
“I suppose so. I doubt anyone else is coming.”