Chapter 9
Mist on black water. The crew sits on a rock shelf at the foot of the cliffs, soaked through and shivering. Behind them, a few charred planks of the Kettle bob in the shallows.
Drekk sits alone at the water's edge, staring at the place where his boat went down. Marka sits a few metres behind him, saying nothing and staying close.
wringing seawater out of his coat. Through the wet cloth, thirty-seven shards glow softly.
Out on the water, the mist parts. A figure walks toward them across the surface of the fjord, unhurried, every step setting down a perfect ring on the still water.
A tall man with slate-grey skin and a long white braid woven with one black and one red strand. He has electric-blue eyes and, on his forehead, a third eye, closed for now, a line of black. His robes are three colours, blue-violet, fire-red and dawn-white, like three people's clothes sewn into one.
The low sun is behind him, and he casts three shadows, in three different directions, as if the light were coming from three suns.
He stops ten metres from the rock shelf, standing on water as if it were a floor.
SMURJAN · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist #2,201
Two other voices come out of it at the same time, layered over his.
every face a different shade of what.
Patient. The patience of someone who has never once lost an argument he cared about.
For a moment he looks like he might be decent. Then he grins.
Smurjan sighs, a long, three-part sigh.
One of his three shadows stands up off the water. It peels away from the surface and becomes a woman: a long red braid whipping loose, ash-grey skin, red markings and a sickle-sword of black glass in each hand. Her grin is all edges.
KALI · aspect of the Trinity · (counted with Smurjan)
Rougeina is already moving. She looks at a stone behind Kali, blinks, and is there, both blades swinging for Kali's back.
Kali doesn't turn around. She just looks at Rougeina's silver-rose phantom-trail as it fades in the air, and breathes it in.
flashing silver-rose, the exact colours of Rougeina's sin-mark. Rougeina's mark on her own wrist dims.
Two Swappers. Kali has borrowed the Swap for one minute. She and Rougeina blink across the rock shelf and the fjord, swapping with stones, driftwood, gulls and each other's blades. Dozens of silver-rose phantom-trails criss-cross the air like a spider's web of silver-rose ghosts, and every one of them is mid-strike.
In the centre, steel meets black glass: Rougeina's blade and Kali's sickle, locked, the two women face to face.
Marka swings her anchor in a huge arc to clear Kali off the shelf. Kali Swaps with the anchor itself. Marka suddenly holds nothing, and Kali is standing on Marka's own shoulders, laughing.
Kompis, freezing and soaked, raises Ivar. Ivar's ghost appears on the barrel, squinting.
Kali's eyes. The silver-rose flickers, fades, and goes out.
She drops back into Smurjan's shadow like a stone into a pond, and vanishes.
breathing hard, blood on her cheek, the silver-rose glow coming back to her own wrist. She has never been beaten at her own game before.
still standing on the water as if nothing happened.
beneath Smurjan. The water bulges. Something enormous is rising from beneath the surface, under the second of his three shadows.
BAKASURA surfaces: a colossal shape of black and amber, mostly mouth. A maw as wide as a barn door, rows of teeth like broken pillars, small mournful eyes high above it all. Water pours off him in sheets.
BAKASURA · aspect of the Trinity · (counted with Smurjan)
A boulder the size of a house sits at the foot of the cliff. Bakasura's maw closes over it.
The boulder is gone.
chewing thoughtfully.
The maw turns toward the crew.
Vigolas is already shouting and running.
The crew scrambles up the rock shelf toward a crack in the cliff. Marka throws Drekk over her shoulder, Kompis scoops up Mingus, Rougeina hauls Trollmage up by his collar, and the crow flaps after them.
Bakasura's jaws snap shut on the cave mouth just behind them. Stone splinters. The crew tumbles into darkness.
The crew is panting and bruised. Through the jagged opening, the daylight shows the fjord. Bakasura is sinking back down, and Smurjan stands on the water looking at the cave. He doesn't follow.
at the cave mouth, still clutching his coat.
calling up to them, his three voices for once in agreement:
A small troll village of turf-roofed longhouses built into the mountainside, smoke curling from the chimneys. Along the ridge above it stands a row of figures in black-and-white robes, like the printed lines of a page.
Starting at the nearest longhouse, the colour is draining out of the world. The turf goes grey, the smoke goes grey, and a troll child's red scarf goes grey, while the child is still wearing it.
holding an unrolled scroll and reading it aloud. His voice is a dry, precise drone. Behind him, the sun comes up white.