Tundra

Some men die old, sitting in sallow skin, afraid of death. Eiron was not afraid of death, or of any of the things for which death is so often a scapegoat. In particular, he was not afraid of dying young, a prospect that grew steadily more real as he rowed towards the mass. Layers of muscle slid over his vast back like the movement of tectonic plates, every stroke as cataclysmic for the sea he stirred. Out of its turbulent pit there rose a mountainous island, rugged and craggy, but dripping waterfalls from every orifice. Its looming shadow was enough to eclipse the shimmering sea, and it was riddled with coves and beaches over which horseshoe crab-like parasites scuttled, preening the reeded edges of pools girt with baleen. Everywhere, the island groaned and spewed, gushed, trickled and whispered with the sounds of water, because it was not an island, but simply an elder place, the corporeal seat of an elder spirit. Squadrons of Seafarers, mutated by the fungus that still stained their skins a raw red, patrolled up and down the living shores. As Eiron drove his boat aground, he heard them muttering.

‘I don’t like this,’ said one.

‘You don’t like this perfect raiding position we’ve got?’ replied another, spitefully, his voice a gurgling of words regurgitated through slack jaws. As he turned, his shoulders shuddered, as if he were some kind of puppet.

‘I don’t like having our boats in some kind of monster’s mouth,’ slurred the first, eyeing the crater, from which a sunken pupil watched its body’s crawling exterior with aeons of detachment.

‘Why not? Erasmus has this monster under control.’

‘Look at this thing. Do you think Erasmus really has it under control?’ As the first no-longer-man spoke, there was a baleful rumbling, the distant sound of something like submerged, ominous whale song. ‘It’s getting restless. Listen.’

‘The High Thane has powerful magic,’ the second infected Seafarer affirmed.

‘Then why aren’t we allowed light fires? We all know it’s so we don’t irritate this thing. Why can’t the High Thane keep it under control?’

Bent for creeping, Eiron moved on, his hands cupping the lantern light of a rune of finding I had given him. With its glow, he found a fissure set in brittle crust, striking golden arcs and rainbows like oil from the surface of the slick, shining rock-lie substance. The fissure led down to the sea, the sea inside the monster’s belly. There, like a tethered sea-dragon, limp and without spirit, was the prisoner Aais, restrained by ropes of thick seaweed Activating the second rune he had been given, a rune of second skin, Eiron covered himself in a fitted bubble, and dived into the brine.

‘Aais?’ he called out, his booming voice echoing around the slimy chamber.

‘Eiron?’ Aais’ reply was weak. ‘You’ve come to save me?’ He stirred slightly in the water as he searched for the direction from which salvation came. He might have been a dead thing, nudged vainly by the tide.

‘What happened to you?’

‘Menaus and his comrades were waiting below the water, guarding this elder,’ Aais explained.’ They grabbed me as soon as I breached the surface.’

‘How are you still alive?’

‘They want to turn me.’ Now Aais sounded desperate. ‘I’ve been involved with the only opposition they have. If they can possess me, they’ll know everything about our friends.’
Eiron was sceptical. ‘So why haven’t they just force-fed you the fungus?’

‘They need all of it to keep controlling this elder. We have to free the elder, Eiron.’

‘So you’re still you?’

‘For the moment, yes.’

‘Very well. I believe you.’

With huge hands still sore from the splinters of rowing, Eiron seized the ropes of slippery, stinging kelp and tugged them until they tore. With his remaining strength, he hefted a near lifeless and water-logged Aais over his shoulder, and splashed around in waist-deep water until he could deposit his gulping and spluttering rescue on a kind of ledge.

‘Thankyou.’ Aais managed. ‘Now, we need to free the elder.’

‘No.’ Eiron refused to alter the plans I had set in place. ‘We have to get back to the others.’

‘But it’s possessed, and it’s suffering, and trying to free itself,’ Aais pleaded. ‘We have to help it.

‘How?’ Eiron asked stubbornly. ‘I don’t know the first thing about exorcisms. We have people who do, but we have to get back to them.’

As if with malevolent omnipotence, the waters from which the fish-man had been dragged began to churn. From their purpling midst, another denizen of the deep was spat up. This creature was as near to Aais in likeness as any of his kin, and yet it was his complete opposite. The fins were ragged, torn to shreds and rotted like mildewy lace where they hung about his face, framing a lop-sided grimace. His fangs were yellow, and bared where the flesh had crept back from his lips, tightened by decay. Even his claws were black, darkened by the stains of so much blood. Menaus swam closer to Eiron, hesitating as if mesmerised.

‘How wonderful,’ he drooled. ‘The Seafarer has come to us. We have something to show you, Seafarer.’

Unslinging his axe, which shone with fresh lustre from the seawater bath that had cleansed it, Eiron took a ready stance.

‘Really?’ He dared Menaus to say more. ‘I’ve been toe-to-toe with giants, fish-man. What do you think I’m going to do to you?’ Raising his weapon, he hefted it high above his head, positioning the swing that would lop Menaus’ from his scrawny shoulders. Before he could execute the motion, however, something else grabbed onto the head of the axe.
‘No,’ Aais begged. ‘He is my friend.’

‘Your friend’s not in there anymore,’ Eiron said stiffly, shaking Aais off as easily as if he were an errant droplet of water, or some spilled crimson the snow was thirsty for.

‘You don’t know that.’

With a hiss, Menaus lunged forward, lurching towards the massive Seafarer, who easily evaded him. Eiron grappled onshore to hoist Aais back over his shoulder. As he did so, a pebble, round and black, toppled out of Aais’ hand. Seeing the sending stone, Eiron grabbed it up, praying that its pre-prepared rune was still active as he stroked it in the pattern he had been shown, and barked, ‘High ground!’ As the shout went up, so did Menaus’ rotted fingertips, which managed to slap the stone away, sending it skipping over the now bright violet surface of the water and sinking into the potent depths.

‘Come into the dark water!’ Menaus beckoned the Seafarer with his swaying, trance-induced dance. ‘One way or another, you will be with us.’

Forgetting the stone that was long gone, swallowed by the elder into who knew what kind of chasm or organ, Eiron ran.