a hum and a purr, escalating to include a faint whistling and breathless gasp. Soon, it began to tinkle, as though it were a gem of sounds being cut into tiny, euphoric crystals.
A song without words, he thought, so pretty . . . so pretty . . .
His body was numb now. It no longer hurt to blink; the fact that he could not breathe no longer worried him. He lost himself in the song, agony forgotten as he listened to the delicate voice.
Ah, I remember now. He nodded weakly to himself. From the boat . . . it’s calling to me again.
And he let himself be called, slipping away into darkness. His vision went blank, eyes closing so that nothing else in the world would matter, not even the shadow creeping over him and the cold, pale hand reaching for him as he lay motionless in the sand.
Fifteen
YOU, TOO, SHALL HEAR
‘She is speaking so clearly now.’ Had he any nerve left to be shaken, Lenk certainly would have lost his at the near-orgasmic bliss with which the Abysmyth sighed. His courage, however, was long devoured, vanished under the flocks of Omens who gnawed incessantly at the body parts strewn across the ground. They shredded with their teeth, slurped long strings of greasy meat into their inner lips, all the while chattering their graces over the bounteous meal they had been served.
‘We hear Her,’ they chanted between chews, ‘and so are we blessed. We hear Her.’
The Abysmyth, in response, shook its colossal head.
‘But there yet remains no virtue in hearing Her name echoed by the choir.’ Slowly, it fixed two great empty eyes upon Lenk. ‘And you? Do you hear Her, my son? Have your ears been freed?’
‘Don’t answer,’ the voice inside his head uttered, ‘it wants an answer.’
‘Why?’ he barely managed to gasp to his unseen companion.
‘It is an abomination, and like all abominations, it knows it is nothing. It is a preacher, and like all false preachers, it craves validation. It does not belong in this world. It needs a reason to exist.’
‘And we,’ Lenk muttered, ‘are that reason?’
‘No,’ the voice replied, ‘we are the reason it dies today.’
‘You keep saying that, but how? How do we kill it?’
‘As we kill everything else.’
Lenk’s eyes drifted to the armless man dangling from the Abysmyth’s claws, his eyelids flickering, straining to stay open through the pain long enough to mouth his silent plea to Lenk: Kill me, kill me, kill me. His wordless chant was like that of the Omens: repetitive, droning, painful to hear, or to imagine hearing.
‘Can we—’
‘He is lost,’ the voice interrupted callously, ‘he is of no use to us, either.’
‘But we can’t just—’ Lenk attempted to lift a leg to move forwards.
‘We shall.’ He felt it go numb under him.
‘I don’t—’ He tried to tighten his grip on his sword.
‘We do.’ The weapon felt like a lead weight, useless at his side.
‘My son,’ the Abysmyth gurgled with an almost sympathetic inclination, ‘do not fear what your eyes behold today.’ It held up a single, webbed digit and shook it back and forth. ‘For the eyes are what weaken you. Through ears, you shall find your salvation.’
‘No ...’
The word came too softly from Lenk’s lips, his own voice paralysed with fear as he watched the demon’s arm crane up to its dangling captive. It pinched one of the Cragsman’s meaty legs with two massive fingers, rubbing it between the digits thoughtfully.
‘And so do I grant two gifts today,’ it continued, keeping a giant black pupil fixed on Lenk. ‘To you, the deaf, I grant the gift of hearing.’ With a thick, squishing sound, the eye rotated back to the pirate. ‘And to you, the misled, I offer you this gift—’
‘No.’
Lenk spoke louder this time, but without conviction, his voice little more than a tiny pebble hurled from a limp wrist. Such a projectile merely bounced off the Abysmyth’s leathery hide, unheeded, unheard.
‘For no God you claim to know has ever bestowed upon you this quality of wisdom.’ Against the sound of the leg being wrenched free from its socket, the sound of paper ripping, meat splattering, the Cragsman’s shriek was but a whimper. ‘Where are they now, my son? Do they hear you, even as you scream? Even as you beg?’
It shook its head with some grim mockery of despair. It rolled its fingers, twirling the severed limb like a daisy petal before tossing it aside, adding to the Omens’ sun-ripened buffet.