The Art of Hunting (25 page)

He had to hope the suits would be enough.

‘What do you think it was?’

Maskelyne looked over to see Mellor clinging to the wheel-house ladder.

‘The host?’ Maskelyne replied. ‘I think it was human. Or possibly Unmer.’

The other man nodded. ‘The men share your belief. Some of them claim they’ve seen a face there.’

They watched the island in silence for a while.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ Maskelyne said, ‘I doubt the brain still functions as it once did. Who can say if such a mutation has the capacity to know pain or despair?
Perhaps the parasite offers satisfaction in exchange for aid. Pleasure, even. We might also posit that the human mind can come to accept even the most grievous change. Dragons thrive in their own
addictions and madness. Are we not all creatures of the same cosmos? Is it not arrogant to perceive degeneration as a cruelty?’

‘Not when it’s imposed.’

Maskelyne shook his head. ‘It’s always imposed. Why is it that life is so abhorred by the universe? Why must our existence be an endless battle against entropy? There’s nature,
clawing at our heels, undoing life’s tapestries as fast as we can weave them.’ He stood up and threw his arms wide and cried out. ‘The will of the universe is the will of the void
and the void has but
one single intention
. To reach equilibrium like any other wave.’ Slowly he sat back down again. ‘Time continues to slow and space continues to stretch and
thin and homogenize. And we cannot appeal to vacuum. That would be too . . .’ He caught himself, smiled. ‘Too unfair. The truth is that life itself is unnatural.’ He raised his
chin, indicating the island.

‘There is a creature debased in your eyes. But would it not be true to say that the parasite has brought it closer to the natural state?’

Mellor shrugged. ‘Your perception of nature is different to mine,’ he said. ‘Still, I hope that come tomorrow you’ll tread just as carefully as the less . . . uh . . .
philosophical volunteers.’

Maskelyne grinned. ‘Oh, it’s all just semantics, anyway. What we refer to as nature is at odds with the fundamental nature of the universe. Now tell me, Mellor, which of the men
volunteered to accompany their captain into the monster’s maw.’

‘All but one.’

Maskelyne raised his eyebrows. ‘Who was the one?’

‘New lad.’ Mellor grinned. ‘Should I do the usual?’

‘Well, of course,’ Maskelyne said.‘One must learn to conquer one’s fears, after all.’

‘Very good, Captain.’

No dreams came that night to disturb Maskelyne’s sleep. He woke before dawn and joined several of his crew on the bathysphere deck. With Mellor was Spenratter the dive
engineer and the coward who had failed to volunteer – a twenty-year-old Evensraumer named Charles Pendragon. Now that this young man understood the outcome of his decision, he would
undoubtedly be more inclined to put his name forward for future expeditions. It was through small steps like these that Maskelyne had long forged and tempered collections of men into crews.

A fragile pink light glimmered in the east and a profusion of stars yet dusted the sky above the ship’s twin iron funnels. It seemed to Maskelyne that the ocean around them simmered with
the same dark energy of the cosmos – tremulous and pregnant with elemental wrath. It was a medium of both degeneration and creation, of cold indifference to those it altered.

Maskelyne had chosen Spenratter to accompany him lest they had any issues with the suits while away from the
Lamp
. He saw no danger on the island other than the danger posed by crawling
samal filaments. A well-maintained dive suit ought to keep those out. Pendragon said nothing as Mellor and the others helped him into his suit, but the terror in his eyes was clear for all to see.
His hands trembled when they handed him a dragon lance. He almost dropped the weapon. His finger would be jumpy on its trigger, liable to spray flame wildly at the first hint of trouble.
Maskelyne’s diving suit was brine-proof, but it wasn’t particularly fireproof. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘That suit’s a poor fit. Don’t you think, Mr
Mellor?’

Mellor frowned, but clearly knew better than to question his captain’s comment. ‘It is, sir.’

‘Slack around the knees, there,’ Maskelyne added, pointing.

The first officer nodded. ‘Droops like my old nan’s tit, sir.’

‘Get him out of it,’ Maskelyne said. ‘Find me someone more suitable.’

Pendragon’s eyes snapped to Maskelyne. And suddenly all trace of fear had vanished from him, to be replaced by sudden and righteous defiance. ‘Please, sir,’ he said. ‘The
suit fits just fine.’

‘The gloves are too large for your hands,’ Maskelyne replied. ‘You’ll struggle to pull that weapon’s trigger.’

‘It’s not a problem, sir.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Maskelyne studied the young man for a long moment. ‘You know what we face over there?’

Pendragon nodded. There was, Maskelyne noted, no longer even a hint of nervousness about the boy. He held his dragon lance with the relaxed grip of a veteran.

‘Why the change of heart, son?’

‘No change of heart, sir. I wanted to go, and it’s well known you choose new sailors who refuse to volunteer.’

‘You’re not scared?’

‘I’ve faced worse.’

Maskelyne laughed. ‘Worse than the mother of all samal?’

‘My old man, sir, was a hell of a brute.’

Maskelyne’s smile faded. He gripped the young man’s shoulder. ‘Mark my words, son. You have a long and prosperous future in my employ.’

‘Provided I survive today.’

‘You’ll survive today.’

When all three men were suited up, they clambered down into the
Lamp
’s steel-hulled dory. He used this thirty-foot flat-hulled vessel primarily as a tender, but also in those rare
occasions when the shallows gave up trove. She still bore the Valcinder shipyard’s mark on her side,
VM22
, although the crew called her
Tutu
. Mellor passed him down the
crystal locator device, which he set on his lap. A cursory glance confirmed that their destination was indeed the heart of the parasite’s island.

Spenratter started the engines and soon the small boat was skimming across the tea-dark water towards the floating island. As they drew nearer, they began to smell the rich musky odour of the
thing. The suits were merely for protection from the samal’s gossamer tentacles; they lacked the means to pump air into them so far from the
Lamp
, and so simply breathed through the
disconnected hose valves at the top of each helmet – an opening through which they were most vulnerable to ingress.

Nevertheless, the stench was so foul Maskelyne wished he’d possessed the foresight to have filters fitted. Young Pendragon sat in the stern, pale faced and gripping the gunwale with both
hands, while Spenratter’s stocky figure stood over him at the wheel.

‘You’ll get used to the feel of it soon enough,’ Maskelyne said, his voice muffled by the heavy glass-and-brass sphere around his head. ‘But if you want to vomit, do it
now. There won’t be an opportunity to open your helmet after we land.’

‘I’m fine, sir.’

‘Spenratter?’

‘Actually quite enjoying the smell,’ he said. ‘Reminds me of the wife’s cooking.’

‘I’ve tasted your wife’s cooking, Spenratter,’ Maskelyne said. ‘And I find that remark grossly unfair to the samal.’

The three of them laughed.

The lamp mechanism around the crystal continued to point unerringly towards the island. And soon the veined and gas-filled bladders were looming over their hull. The host flesh had been
stretched and distorted over the centuries into new and grotesque forms, hillocks of bone enmeshed with red muscle and rumples of skin in which gleamed teeth. Mounds of diaphanous bubbles trembled
in the breeze and gave off such hellish aromas as to make one cry out in anguish. The land throbbed and glistened and seeped and shivered. Rivulets of pink fluid trickled between pale mounds beset
by black rot. And among this post-human morass there grew clutches of botanic life. The roots of grasses and other small plants found purchase in all manner of moist and yielding surfaces and so
clung there and thrived. Tangles of undergrowth drank the sweat of unusual soils. And, further into the heart of the island, Maskelyne could see trees.

Trees.

Through what hives of nerves and memories did their deep roots plunge?

Spenratter eased back the throttle and the boat’s engines dropped to a murmur. For several dozen yards they coasted along muscular banks packed with knuckle-like protrusions, until
Spenratter spotted a suitable place to land. Here the shore was scalloped and shallower and the
Tutu
’s bow slid up onto the sticky fabric of the island. It may have been
Maskelyne’s imagination, but he thought he saw the entire bank give a shudder.

He stepped out onto the island.

The ground was surprisingly firm underfoot, and yet quite as glutinous as its appearance suggested. The earth clung to his soles like moist lips and educed from each step a faint supping sound,
his boots parting from the soil as a bandage parts from a wound. At the top of the bank lay an expanse of red and black mounds rising three to six yards high with channels of greenery crammed
between them. The substance of these mounds was not immediately identifiable, although to Maskelyne they looked like tumours. He perceived black veins under the skin of the land. Beyond these
mounds there loomed an enormous grey and yellow sac, or lung, that rocked slightly in the breeze.

They dropped the boat’s anchor cautiously and tied her bowline to a stout branch, before setting forth to explore this strange place.

Maskelyne climbed the bank with Spenratter and Pendragon close behind him. The defiles running between these earthen tumours were too congested with branches and vines to permit easy passage and
so he clambered up on the first of the mounds themselves. The living ground under his boots felt as hard as packed earth. He stopped at the summit and shielded his eyes from the sun. His breaths
echoed in his helmet and already he was blinking back the sweat. He consulted the locator. The source of sorcery lay to the north.

‘Look, there,’ Pendragon said, pointing down into the green channel below them.

Maskelyne spotted a white tendril moving out of the undergrowth. It was snaking towards them across the darkly mottled surface of the mound. A further two, then four tendrils appeared out of the
vegetation. Each one was barely thicker than cotton string and yet they crept unerringly towards the three interlopers, guided by unseen intelligence.

Spenratter cried out suddenly and raised his foot. Another filament had crept up on him unnoticed and wrapped itself around his shin. He wrenched his foot away, but it would not release him.

Maskelyne took out his knife and cut his companion free. He did not want to use his lance until they had no other choice. ‘Let’s not linger here,’ he said, urging his comrades
onwards. ‘Keep moving. And keep to the high ground.’

The three explorers proceeded by short scrambles and leaps from mound to mound, careful to keep ahead of the searching filaments that reached out from the green gullies. The geology of the
landscape continued in this fashion around one side of the bruised yellow gas sac and then sloped downwards and levelled as the mounds became smaller. Behind the sac they discovered a great pink
crater wherein there lay entrenched a sodden cluster of bones. It appeared that the bones had been partially unearthed from this wound in the earth, or else partially absorbed. From the enormous
size of them Maskelyne supposed they could be the remains of a whale. But then they might well be part of the same unfortunate creature upon whose back they now walked. He could not know for
sure.

The land behind the crater remained mostly level but was pocked by larger solitary mounds that seemed to be formed of a more elastic, greyish material. These expanded and contracted gently. The
host’s lungs, perhaps. Clumps of vegetation clung to the scabrous ground in places but the men kept to the open areas between them. They crossed some kind of cracked grey scurf that resembled
dragon hide, and it occurred to Maskelyne, now that he thought about it, that there was something else about this particular part of the island that reminded him of those great Unmer serpents. An
unwholesome beauty? An aura? The air here smelled like the breath from a serpent’s lungs. He paused to get his bearings. To the north-east he could see three more gas bladders, these as red
as gums, rising from low scrub. Closer, and to the east stood the trees he had spotted from afar. He was marvelling at the age of these specimens when Pendragon suddenly cried out.

He turned to find the young man on his knees, frantically hacking away with his knife at something near his shins. Maskelyne hurried over at once and immediately established that
Pendragon’s predicament was exactly as he had feared: the sailor had become ensnared by yet more of the parasite’s tentacles. These ones had – Maskelyne now saw – emerged
from between the scales of the ground. Those gossamer threads had already reached around Pendragon’s thighs and pulled him to the ground.

Maskelyne looked down at his own legs.

And there saw white tendrils curling around his shins.

‘Blasted things are everywhere,’ he said. He dropped to a crouch and drew his knife across the tendrils, severing handfuls of them. But for every dozen he cut, twice as many snaked
out of the ground and curled around his boots. They moved with terrifying speed.

‘Stand.’

Maskelyne glanced over to see Spenratter with his dragon lance levelled and pointed at Maskelyne’s feet. He stood up quickly.

Spenratter squeezed the trigger and a gout of flame burst from the nozzle at the end of the weapon. Fire engulfed Maskelyne’s boots and lower legs for a moment, before Spenratter quenched
the spray. The tentacles had all burned away, leaving the dive suit partially soot-blackened but otherwise undamaged. The dive master then turned his lance on Pendragon and burned those tendrils
too. Maskelyne sensed a faint shudder under his feet. Had the island just
reacted
? If so, he wondered if that had been a shudder of pain, or fury?