Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes

Author:Sam Sykes
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780575090293
Publisher: Victor Gollancz Limited
Published: 2010-10-15T04:33:37.458000+00:00

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.

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