Nor, he thought as he spied a slender figure standing knee-deep in the surf, did hell possess women. Not ones that didn’t sever and slurp up one’s testes, anyway. The sunlight blinded him as he squinted against the shimmering shore. He saw pale skin, long hair wafting in the breeze, a flash of emerald.

‘Kat …’ he whispered, afraid to ask. ‘Kataria?’

The gale carried a cloud across the sun that cloaked the beach with the cruel clarity of shadow. The figure turned to regard him and he saw green locks tumbling to pale shoulders, feathery gills wafting delicately about her neck, fins extending from the sides and crown of her head as she canted her head and regarded him.

‘Oh,’ he muttered, ‘it’s you.’

Greenhair was not her name, he remembered, but it was what they had given her. She was a siren, a servant of Zamanthras, the Mother. She had aided them in locating the tome. But she had fled afterwards, he recalled, fled from the duty to find the tome and slay the Abysmyths, fled from the duty she claimed was holy.

Why?

‘Young silverhair is awake.’ The siren’s voice was a melody, a lilting lyric in every syllable. He remembered it being more beautiful before, rather than the dirge it was now. ‘I feared you dead.’

‘I suppose it would have been a waste of time, then, to keep the bugs off of me,’ Lenk muttered, pulling the dredgespider’s webbing from his body.

‘They feed where they can, silverhair,’ she replied. ‘It has been a long time since they found something substantial and alive on this island.’

‘Except me?’

‘Except you,’ she said, sounding almost disappointed. Seeing his furrowed brow, she forced a weak smile. ‘But you live. I am glad.’

‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m awfully pleased, myself,’ he said, trying to rise, ‘but-’

A shriek ripped through him alongside the fire lancing through his leg. He collapsed back to the sand, looking to his thigh. Or rather, to the scaly green mass that had once been his neatly-stitched and bandaged thigh. The wound had been ripped open, the meat beneath the skin glistening and discoloured at the edges.

‘Do not tax yourself,’ Greenhair said, wading out of the surf. Her webbed fingers twitched as she approached him. ‘Your wound festers. Your life flows with your protest. The scent is sweet to predators.’

He glanced out over the sea. The dredgespiders skimmed across the surface, casting eight-eyed glares at his unsportsmanlike decision to live. The pain coursed through him with such agony that he absently considered lying back and letting them have him.

Still, biting back both the agony and the obscenities accompanying it, he rose to one foot, fighting off the dizziness that struggled to bring him back down.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘The home of the Owauku,’ she replied. ‘Dutiful servants of the Sea Mother, devout in their respect for her ways.’

‘Owa … what?’ Lenk twitched. ‘No, where amI? What is this place?’

‘Teji.’

‘Teji …’ The word tasted familiar on his tongue. The realisation lit up behind his eyes, gave him strength to rise. ‘Teji. Teji!’ At her baffled glance, he grinned broadly, hysteria reflected in every tooth. ‘This is where we’re supposed to be! This is where Sebast is going to meet us, who will take us back to Miron, who will pay us and then we’re done. We did it! We made it! We’re … we …’

We.

That word tasted bitter, sounded hollow on the sky. He stared across the shore. Empty sand, empty sea met him, vast and utterly indifferent to the despair that grew in his belly and spread onto his face.

‘Where are they?’ he asked, choked. ‘Did you find no one else?’

She shook her head. ‘Teji is not where people go to live, silverhair.’

‘What? It’s a trading post, Argaol said.’

She fixed him with a dire gaze. ‘Silverhair … Teji is a tomb.’

She levelled a finger over his head. At once, he felt a darkness over him, a shadow that reached deeper into him than the clouded sky overhead. He turned and stared up into the face of a god.

The statue looked back down at him from where it leaned, high upon a sandy ridge. A right hand wrought of stone was extended, palm flat and commanding all who beheld it. A stone robe wrapped a lean figure set upon iron, treaded wheels. In lieu of a face, the great winged phoenix sigil of Talanas was carved, staring down at Lenk through unfurled wings and crying beak.

The monolith was a vision of decay: wheels rusted and sand-choked, stone rumbling in places, worn where it was intact. Against that, the pile of skulls that had been heaped about its wheels seemed almost insignificant.

‘What?’ he gasped. ‘What is this place?’

‘It is where the battle between Aeons and mortals began in earnest,’ Greenhair replied. ‘The servants of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity opposed the Aeons, the greed-poisoned servants of the Gods. Ulbecetonth, most spiteful and vicious of them, was driven back before their onslaught. Her children and followers faced them down here. They died. The mortals died. And when the last drop was spilled, the land died with them.’

‘Died …’ he whispered. ‘My companions …’

‘Unfortunate’ she said, moving closer to him. ‘The Akaneeds are vigilant, voracious. They leave nothing behind.’

‘Nothing …’

‘Even if your companions survived, there is nothing here to feed them. They would die, too. They would find nothing here.’

Nothing.

The word was heavier than the whisper it was carried on, loading itself upon Lenk’s shoulders and driving him to the earth. He collapsed in the shadow of the monolith, the sigil of Talanas looking down upon him without pity, as he was certain the god Himself did at that moment.

‘I am sorry,’ Greenhair whispered, her voice heavy in its own right as her lips drew close to his ear. ‘I found nothing of them.’

‘Nothing.’

‘No one …’

‘No one.’ Lenk swallowed hard. ‘The others … all of them …’ The next word felt like forcing razors up through his throat. ‘Kataria.’

‘You survive, silverhair,’ she whispered, placing hands upon his shoulders, sitting down. ‘No fear for you now. There is no danger. Rest now.’

‘Rest … I must rest.’ He was suddenly aware of how tired he was, how his bones seemed to melt inside him. She gently eased his head in her lap. ‘This …’ he muttered as he felt the coolness of her ivory skin. ‘This seems … feels strange.’

‘Worry will cause you nothing but pain,’ Greenhair whispered. Her voice seemed to rise now, the whispering crescendo to a melodic choir. ‘You need only rest, silver-hair. Fear for them later. Close your eyes … You need only worry about one thing.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked, barely aware of the yawn in his question, barely aware of the iron weight of his eyelids.

‘Where is it?’ she whispered, a gentle prod in his ear.

‘Where’s what?’

‘The tome,’ she prodded again. ‘Where is it?’

‘ This,’ another voice, harsh and cold against her melody, hummed inside his head, ‘ is wrong. We must search, not rest.’

‘The Akaneeds leave nothing …’ Lenk repeated, his own tone listless.

‘ How does she know of the serpents? Why does she want us to sleep?’

‘You must have had it,’ Greenhair whispered. ‘You have read it. You know where it is.’

‘ She does not know that,’ the voice growled, drowning out her whisper. ‘ She cannot know that.’

‘How,’ Lenk muttered, ‘do you know that?’

He felt her tense beneath him, even as he felt his head tighten.

‘I … I do not …’ she began to stammer, the melody breaking in her voice.

‘ She’s in our head,’ the voice roared, echoing off his skull. ‘ Get out! Get out!GET OUT!’

‘ OUT!’

He shot up like a spear, whirling around just as she scrambled to get away from him. Her pale, slender arm was held up in pitiful defence before a slack-jawed, wide-eyed face full of terror. He was unmoved by the display, as he was unmoved by the hot agony in his leg. That pain quickly seeped away, replaced with a chill that snaked through his body, numbing him to pain, to fear.