A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,223

was heaving full force, no one was allowed near it.

I arrived from Tömerhil during high tide, weary from travel and grief, my family lost for certain, and had to wait hours before the queue even began to move. The people in front and in back of me had no interest in conversation. Why try to befriend someone who most likely would be dead soon? Like me, I suspect that most people in line had little left to live for. There was only a sullen acceptance of boredom. Or perhaps I was misinterpreting the silence for piety and meditation and the thinking of profound thoughts in advance of seeking a blessing from the Lord of the Deep. In truth I can speak for no one but myself.

The entrance to the Lung was a narrow gated hall reminiscent of a covered bridge, and to enter the area one first had to speak to a longshoreman who had spoken the same words so many times that his voice had become a despairing monotone.

“Welcome, Seeker,” he said without a trace of welcome. “You understand that by diving into Bryn’s Lung you will most likely drown and your body be eaten by marine animals and never recovered?”

“Uh. Yeah?”

He shoved a piece of paper at me, along with a quill already wet with ink. “Please fill out your name in the blank, last residence, and sign at the bottom.”

There was quite a bit of fine print beneath the basic blanks at the top and the signature at the bottom. “What is this?”

“Conditional bequeathal of all your worldly possessions to the government of the pelenaut should you not have an executable will, and of course if you are blessed, the bequeathal is null.”

“All my worldly possessions? You’re looking at them.” Maybe I still had a house in Fornyd. Or a warehouse in Festwyf. What did it matter?

“Someone will enjoy those clothes,” the longshoreman said.

“May they bring them warmth,” I said, filling out the form and signing it.

“Thank you, citizen. Disrobe after you talk to the priest and leave your clothes with the attendant at the end of the hall.”

I thought of several quips about disrobing priests but figured the longshoreman had already heard them all by now and asked instead, “Is it always this busy?”

“No; it’s only since the attack. Lots of people figure they have nothing to lose anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s me, too.” I moved on so that he could repeat himself to the next person in line.

The priestess of the Lord Bryn was a kind older woman in the traditional long robe of chromatic blues. Unlike the disaffected longshoreman, she recognized me as an individual who might have a story. But I didn’t want to tell her mine, and after a minimal effort at politeness, I moved on.

The entrance to the Lung was an impressive seven feet in circumference, allowing some much-needed room to dive in without hitting the sides of the chimney. Some people gracelessly did just that, leaping too far or not far enough and catching themselves on the rocks, dashing open their heads or otherwise killing themselves before they even hit the water. The suction of low tide in the chimney ensured that they didn’t remain floating on the surface, but I had heard that sometimes their bodies would remain in the chimney for a while and people had to swim past them to reach the cave. One of the blessed periodically swam up into the chimney to make sure it was clear, a vital but grisly task I would never want to call my own.

One last bored longshoreman stood near the edge of the Lung to give final instructions. “Dive in headfirst and swim straight down for the light. When you’re in the cave, you’ll know it and you need to swim for the open sea, which is the black hole of the cave mouth.”

“What’s the light? I mean what’s making it?”

“The interior of the cave is coated with organisms that produce their own light.”

Mincing my way to the edge of the Lung, the coral sharp against the tender soles of my bare feet, I stared down into the roiling cauldron of black water and felt a cool spray misting up from it. The water’s surface rested perhaps a body’s length below, and though I could see no light glowing in its depths, I felt sure it would show up eventually.

“Jump in or walk away,” the longshoreman droned. “Don’t hold up the line.”

“A moment.”

I told my dead wife and kids one more