Riverkeep (6 page)

Wull looked at the sketch, then back at Mrs. Wurth's blank face.

“I'm a man,” he said.

“Not yet, bless you.”

“An' what about Mr. Wurth?” said Wull. “Doesn't his word count for anything?”

“Nope,” said Mrs. Wurth, “that gudgeon's a head full o' magic an' no mistake. I can't make head nor tail o' whut he's sayin' half the time. Exhaustin' fellow—I hardly lets him oot the house.”

Wull rubbed his eyes again. “So what does this mean?” he said.

“It means I's goin' to take this piece o' Mr. Blummells to the newspaper people to see about exchangin' money for the story o' his face,” said Mrs. Wurth, smiling with her eyes this time. “Splittin' it halfways wi' yer faither, o' course,” she added quickly.

Wull glanced over his shoulder at the closed door. “O' course,” he said. “I'll let him know when he gets back.”

Mrs. Wurth picked up the fragment of Emory Blummells's skull, wrapped it in the newspaper, and tucked it under her arm.

“I'll be seein' ye nex' Monday, if you's around, an' I'll be prayin' yer faither's back from whatever ill-begotten pursuit he's got himself engaged in. I'd hate to see a good man like he lost in the pursuit of enjoyment.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Wurth,” said Wull. “I'll be sure to keep clear of it myself.”

“Ye'll be the keep by then, man or no' man. Good luck.” Mrs. Wurth tipped her cap, wrapped her face in her scarf, and went out, a blast of cold darting in around her through the open door.

Wull stood in the mortuary until the rattle of the horses' halters had faded into the distance. Silence returned to the boathouse.

A mormorach. Something about it stirred his blood.

He opened the parlor door and peeked in. With the shutters blocking the morning's sun, the room was a sour-stinking gloom of tight, lived-in airdust swirls dancing in the tiny slivers of light. Pappa was rolling in sleep, grease-matted head swinging over protrusions of collarbone, and his feet had begun once more to move on the boards.

Wull went to him, knelt at his feet, touched his face. “Pappa,” he said quietly. “Are you all right?”

Pappa's eyes burped open: vacant and fogged and deeply ringed with the bruises of restlessness.

“Sleep,” he whispered. “Sleep . . . sleep . . . sleep . . .”

“You can sleep,” said Wull, pushing the hair from his face. As Pappa drifted, Wull held his ankles, absorbing their quick twitches in the aching muscles of his arms. Slowly, Pappa's head ceased its deep-chested swing and the small movements of his wiry frame calmed to a frightening stillness. His big head hung forward, bristled mouth gaping, a thin rope of saliva connecting mouth to knee.

There was something under Pappa's skin, a looseness, as though the muscles were untethering from the bones.

Wull continued to hold the thin legs after sleep had come, his kneeling feet bloodless and sore, watching the movement in the wasted face and drifting into reverie and daydream, overwhelmed by the sense of lost happiness, his wishful memory restoring the flesh to Pappa's bones and the warmth to his eyes.

Eventually he stood and looked at the clock. Even if he meant to return before nightfall, there was at least an hour before he would have to launch the bäta.

He thought of the black-frozen wicks, impervious to the licks of the matches' fire, and the iron rods of the lanterns iced into ever-thickening whiteness. He thought of the mormorach, swimming now out in the estuary, flying—terrifying and powerful—through the depths. That such a beast could be in these very waters filled him with . . . something. A quake that was not dissimilar to the last days' fearful tremors,
but also caused his muscles to tingle with excitement and desire.

The books through which he had pored in search of a solution to Pappa's ailments were still spread across the ledger desk. In habit, he returned to the mortuary to lift his mug, decided instead to hurl it in the river, then went to find mention of the great creature in the pages of his grandfathers' vast, ancient tomes.

Mormorach: literally, “big, big, terror.” Presumed extinct—with no confirmed sighting in over a thousand years (see also
Bohdan
,
Greenteeth
, and
Suire
)—a creature of semi-myth possessed of incredible strength. Estimates put its length at anything up to fifty-five feet, with the breadth of its trunk around six or seven feet. Its mouth, certainly, was filled with tusks the length of a man's forearm, and it is the ornate carvings of these ivory pieces (along with its teeth—razorlike shards of translucent enamel more precious than diamonds) that comprise the bulk of its present-day remains. Strongly linked to the occult, the mormorach contained all manner of valuable substances, from the juices of its eyes (said to be curative of blindness); powder of its bones (relief from rheumatic and arthritic pains); and—most valuable of all—the dark, viscous secretions of its brain glands (curative of dead sleeps, paralysis,
possessions, sicknesses of the mind, and even, it is much rumored, capable of granting eternal life)
.

—
Encyclopedia Grandalia
, University of Oracco Print House

Weeds brushed the mormorach's flanks as it slipped with stately calm through the trench. Several days of hunting had left the waters almost empty of life, and, having finally found something to arouse its interest, it had been following a few ink-spurting squid for more than an hour, moving above them as they scuttled into caves and hollows in the rock. It banked, dipping a slow fin to alter its trajectory, then, as the squid darted back on themselves in a cloud of frightened ink, it twisted in the water, head brushing its tail fin as it whipped its body and dove, mouth wide, taking the squid into its gullet without movement. It bit at the ink, tusks clamping on its face as it sought more prey in the confusing cloud.

Finally the sensory tips of its mucus membranes stopped their signals of food and it drifted in the current once more, shifting its attention to the large shapes on the surface. The slapped contact of hulls on the water arrived as both food source and warning, and the mormorach continued to drift, bellowing, spinning through the silt in the light of its
sonar voice. The surface was crowded, and it allowed itself to rise, settling under a large shape and resting against its bulk, champing its tusks and waiting for the guidance of instinct to shape its course.

Above it, aboard the
Flikka
, the crew ran to their positions at the gunwale, harpoons and ropes hoisted in firm hands that dripped with sweat even in the teeth of the icy sea wind.

The captain, an ageless salt known as Doc Fletcher, stood on the bridge with his fist on the tiller, eyes wide in spite of the constant spray. Flocks of graygulls, frenzied by the catchless days, whirled around him, wailing and keening and launching themselves at the tossing surface.

“The first sight, lads!” Doc shouted. “Launch those bloody darts into his hide! If we lose him to another boat I'll lash the skin from ye! Come on now, eyes to the water—he's right under us, and he'll surely take a look out and see what we're about. An' what are we about?”

“The hunt!” came the response, the deep resonance of many voices shouting as one.

Doc showed his teeth. The boards of his deck were stained a deep crimson, the wood having soaked in blood beyond imagining each time a whale or mairlan or shark was hauled aboard to have its skin and blubber flensed: the termite-scurry of the crew stripping the fleshy giants to the
bone within hours, the meat and fat rendered in stinking fires on deck, skeletons smashed with hammers for corsetry and medicine. The
Flikka
was a ceaseless engine of death, harvesting the lives of the sea with merciless and relentless efficiency. Doc had stolen the wind of the other ships to beat them to this stretch of the water—a creature so large would hunt in the Rosa Trench, and he meant to be first at the harpoons.

A mormorach would be a fine addition to his long list of kills, and would finance the purchase of another boat. Perhaps two. Doc had always seen himself at the head of a fleet, a position that would qualify him as gentry. As the arms of his crew bulged with the tension of their lofted weapons, he pictured the house that might be secured on a purseful of mormorach tusks and began shouting again, senseless exhortations of violence and purpose that came through gritted teeth and fell on the hard ears of sailors for whom death meant money and whose blood had already boiled to the point of fury.

Beneath the
Flikka
, the mormorach floated happily in the current, mouthing the pieces of drifting weed and sea scraps that passed. Another echo told it that even the squid were gone, and the waters of the bay were entirely without fish. The constant impulse to eat meant the empty water was transmitted as threat, and it allowed itself to drift sideways, senses working to find another meal.

“There it is!” cried a steward, pointing.

The rest of the crew rushed about, following the direction of his steady hand and peering through the brightness of the sky glare on the waves. Doc rushed to the bridge's edge.

“Throw!” he yelled, spotting the creature's gliding shadow.

A flurry of harpoons speared the water.

“I hit it!” shouted one man, pulling on the rope that fixed his harpoon to the gunwale. It came up too easily, the point of the blade loose in the water. “But no spike!” he cried. “I've winged it only!”

“Keep throwin'!” shouted Doc. “It'll sound if ye keeps missin' it!”

The harpoons were recovered, thrown again, the lurking shape of the mormorach shrinking as it allowed itself to sink away from the confusing bubbles.

One of the hissing columns had grazed its side with a sharp sting. The shape on the surface was hostile, and with so little food in the water a competitor could not be tolerated.

“It's comin' back!” shouted Doc. He looked at the speed of the moving shadow and grabbed ahold of the tiller. “Lavernes's name,” he whispered.

The mormorach broke the surface and kept rising, clearing the height of the ship and scooping two harpoonists in its jaws before smashing through the edge of the deck in a shower of broken wood and crashing back into
the waves. It threw its head from side to side, serrating the sailors' bodies and sending their limbs drifting, then it passed its mouth through the blood cloud around their corpses, sifting for flesh, biting at clothing and hair and bone. Then it sounded, turning against the seabed before whipping its tail and roaring again.

“To me!” shouted Doc, grabbing a fallen harpoon and mounting the gunwale, rolling with unconscious balance on the swell of the sea against the frozen wind. “When he comes back you stick him with all you've got!”

The mormorach soared past Doc, its massive head knocking him into his crew and shattering the central mast as it broke once more through the deck and—Doc saw with a constriction of his guts—the hull. With majestic slowness, the sail began to topple into the water, and the
Flikka
split in two.

The sea rose in an instant to Doc's feet.

“The ship!” he shouted. “She's breached! She's sinking! Abandon . . . abandon ship!”

But his crew had already begun to flee, throwing themselves from the sinking vessel and swimming for the shore or the boats that surrounded them.

Only Doc remained, scrabbling at the red deck that, now sharply inclined, tipped him into the sea's turbulence. He fought for purchase, the toes of his boots fast on sodden
boards now slick with blood, its iron smell filling his nose over the water's salt. As the deck passed below the surface, Doc felt himself come loose, his flailing, heavy legs exposed to the black depths, a million icy needles stabbing his skin, and he looked around desperately for a sign of the mormorach's silver shadow.

“Help!” he shouted, waving frantically at the other hunting boats. “For the sake of . . . Help!”

The boats, faceless under sails he did not recognize, rolled in the current.

As his thick layers of clothing saturated, Doc sank, his face splashing through the waves, spray filling his mouth as he gulped in a final, desperate breath.

On board the
Hellsong
, far off in the safety of the harbor and leaning on his crutch, Gilt Murdagh snapped closed his telescope between wide leather-skinned palms.

“Mormorach right enough, Cap'n?” asked Ormidale, the first mate, his wide, dark face scrunched in the light.

Murdagh nodded, a grin splitting his beard. “That fat sod Fletcher jus' lost his boat. Himself too, it seems. Went after it wi' harpoons like it was a reg'lar game fish.” He snorted and laughed, shaking his head.

“'In't we usin' harpoons, Cap'n?” said Samjon.

Murdagh glanced at the wind-pinked cabin boy, then shifted his weight to the whalebone stump below his left
knee. “There's a reason this ol' tub's still floatin' while others've made their way to gatherin' hermits an' coral on the seabed.”

“What's the reason, Cap'n? Ow!” said Samjon as Ormidale kicked his ankle.

“Patience,” said Murdagh. He opened the telescope again, pressed it to his good eye, and smiled. “We'll wait till folks around here get nervous—money moves quick on clammy palms. Let's see how the next lot gets on. . . .”

Wull read the passage again.

It was real. And what a beast! If he could get his hands on such an animal, he could buy all the whale oil in the world. And imagine how much the oil of a mormorach would be worth! What would the wealthy lords and ladies in the city pay to have their ballrooms lit by a creature of myth?

He read it again.

For all the wealth in its tusks and teeth, it was the secrets of its glands that stirred him most powerfully: the adventurous capture of treasure was dismissible fancy, but the
properties described in the juices of its eyes and the liquids in its brain meant something altogether more urgent.

Wull looked across at Pappa, at the cloudy strip of pale yellow that bled out below his half-open eyelid; the red-veined looseness of the skin on his face and neck; the hang of his strong head, from which came an almost audible buzzing of mania and pain.

What might the juices of a mormorach's eyes do for Pappa's? And if the ooze of its brain could cure paralysis and sickness of the mind, could it release Pappa from the rotting cage of his body?

Wull looked out the ice-patterned window. The river, closing under slabs of foot-thick ice, had reduced to a narrow channel of still-flowing water. He would need to light the lanterns soon, all of them, to stand a chance of breaking some of the locks of winter.

He read the passage again, and this time searched out the cross-references, starting with the bohdan.

His eyes flew along the tiny print, barely taking it in. He tore both pages from the encyclopedia and pushed the closed book to the back of the desk. Then he read them both again.

He felt faint and short of air, his skin flushing with heat in the cold room. A bohdan—that was what had taken Pappa. Wull saw in his mind the brown mouth and the
flash of the eyes, and vomited onto the floorboards between his feet.

Wiping his mouth, gripping the arm of the chair, Wull glanced again at Pappa, saw the shrinkage in his body, fat and muscle having run off him like water from a drying corpse.

He read again. There was still time, a few days at least.

So it was settled: he could go or he could stay. If he took the few days' journey to Canna Bay, he would need to go now and the river would freeze for certain, casting a pall of shame on the house of the Riverkeep. But if he remained and was unable to light the lanterns, he would be facing a winter locked inside the stinking boathouse with Pappa barking and shouting and angrily dying away from the light and the sky, the pall of shame cast regardless as the thing consumed him.

And the river would cope. The river always coped, and whether or not he failed to light the fires or abandoned it to the creep of winter, it would thaw and rise and teem come the spring as it always did. By which point Pappa would be in the ground.

“It that speaks . . . stinking boy . . . it . . . stinking it . . .”

Wull looked at the furrow of Pappa's brows in his muttering sleep and felt once more the acid wrench of it all, the weight of everything pressing on him, Pappa and the river and his closed-off future tightening around him, stabbing
and knotting his guts until his fear throbbed in his skin.

He shook himself, read once more about the mormorach:
curative of possessions
. This monster was the answer.

There was a drawing of it, a sketch of what the creature might look like from the guesswork of an artist too fond of flowing lines: the animal in the picture was an elegant ribbon of shining skin, tusks little more than decorative ornaments at the corners of a mouth that was coquettishly closed, like the pursed lips of a porcelain doll. Wull imagined the real thing would be more lumpen and raw.