Blankmap: Book I

15. A Darkening Sky

He slept fitfully that night on the deck. Strange shapes and sounds swam in and out of his thoughts, and he was never entirely sure if he was asleep and dreaming or awake and seeing these strange and frightening things. Though he could not swear to it being anything more than a vision the next morning, he was certain of the sight of an impossibly long, scaly back sliding across the surface of the dark sea, lit dimly by the fading moon.

The sun rose clear and bright, washing away the wan traces of starlight that peeked through the morning sky. Solomon Hyrax walked to the thin wooden rail that encircled the deck of the Petrichor. He leaned out over the edge, breathing in deeply the cool salt air. The smell of the sea seemed at once familiar and tragic, as though he had always known he would come here, and had always known it might herald some unknown doom.

Solomon leaned further over the rail, convinced again that he had seen something moving beneath the surface of the water. His eyes took some time adjusting to the early morning sun, the flat light of which was glinting off the calm sea. Solomon became more and more sure that he saw something moving as his eyes began to focus. Whatever it was had yet to break the surface, but it was disturbing the water in the shape of a massive dome.

The young adventurer squeezed himself through the supports of the deck's rail and out onto the ledge of the gently rocking ship to catch a better glimpse of this strange disruption. The early morning breeze was making the hairs stand up at the nape of his neck as he leaned out, out...and saw a massive, gelatinous bulb break the surface and begin floating on the top of the water. The hideous, pulsing thing had a pattern like a four-leafed clover on its top, and thick, ropy tentacles trailing away beneath the waves. The thing was pink-tinged, with ugly purple welts oozing around its edges. It was terrible to behold. The sight of the ghastly thing bobbing in the water, impossibly large, sucked the breath out of Solomon. The young adventurer was dimly aware of the sweat beading on his forehead and a faint ringing in his ears. He began to feel dizzy and he was dimly aware that his quivering hands were losing their grip on the rail as he started to pitch forward.

In an instant he was seized from behind in the iron grip of a long-sleeved arm. He felt bristles on his neck as he was hoisted backwards, and heard a familiar voice muttering "Easy, easy now" into his ear. Solomon was gently lowered onto his back on the hard planks of the deck. His father's face swam into focus as the elder Hyrax knelt beside him. Solomon could feel coarse fingers smoothing his hair out of his damp face, and he became dimly aware that a crowd of men had gathered around them.

"Fa--father," he mumbled. "What happened? What was that?"

"Lay still. Shhhh. Take it easy, son. It was a hellish thing, one I should have warned you about. A Cnidar."

The name meant nothing to Solomon. Would his father ever start to realize he had to explain everything, as Solomon had not seen nearly as much of the world as he? Solomon's mouth was dry and his head still felt thick and sweaty. He could not begin to imagine how something down in the water could have affected him so violently. The thing had barely looked alive, much less capable of inflicting harm from thirty yards away.

"A Cnidar. The gigantic breed of balloonfish that troll the waters of the Catherine Sea. The cursed things have some kind of hypnotic effect. For being big, bloated carcasses they are very, very dangerous. They have to move with the tides, as they can't propel themselves very well, but their feeding patterns seem to match the pull of the waves. If you had hit the water--I--you would have gotten pulled in by that long center coil. Sit up, if you can. You can see it trailing behind there, with the other tentacles."

Solomon slowly sat up, waving off the bracing hand offered to him by one of the ri-Marij. He looked through the railing from a comfortable distance and saw the gigantic Cnidar bobbing away in sick squelching fashion out along the waves. True to his father's words, a tentacle twice as thick as the others trailed out from the center of the thing's underside. It, too, was covered in oozing purple welts, and seemed to be probing the depths.