The Skybound Sea Read Online Free PDF

it all night. When he should have been dreaming of flames and betrayal and his hands wrapped around a slender throat beneath wide green eyes, when he should have been hearing something whisper in his head, something telling him those eyes would see nothing.
    He had been staring at fish.
    Beneath his feet, they stirred as the morning returned color to that world. Coral rose in bright and vivid stains. A fish came out, something drab and gray with bulging eyes and clumsy fins. If it were possible to waddle underwater, it would have done so, clumsily navigating over the coral that seemed all the bleaker for its presence.
    It drew too close to a shadowy nook within the coral. A serpentine eel shot out, eyes glassy even as it rent the fish with narrow jaws. It gobbled up what it could before slinking back into its lair, leaving a few white chunks to drift up to the surface and bump against the soles of Lenk’s boots.
    In an instant, he had seen hope, betrayal, and death. Fitting.
    “How do you figure?”
something responded to his thoughts.
    A voice rose up from the water, something cold and distant. He didn’t blink; voices in his head were nothing new. This was not the cold and distantvoice he knew, though. This was less of a cold blade sunk into his skull and more like a clammy hand on his shoulder.
    “As near as I understand,” he said, “every day for a fish begins with them rising out of the water to go scavenge for food.”
    “Is that hope or necessity?”
    “Little difference.”
    “Agreed. Continue.”
    “Thus, to go out when one expects to find food and instead finding death …”
    “Betrayal?”
    “That was my thinking.”
    “Counterpoint.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “If one could even argue a fish is aware enough of its own existence to feel hope, one might think it wouldn’t feel a great deal of hope by going into a world infested by things that are much bigger and nastier than itself with the slim chance of finding enough food to avoid dying of starvation and instead dying of eels.”
    “That’s betrayal.”
    “That’s nature.”
    “I disagree.”
    “Go right ahead.”
    “I would, but …” He rubbed his temples. “Kataria usually tells me about these things. I’m sure if I talked it over with her—” That thought was cut off by a frigid, wordless whisper. “Look, what’s your point?”
    “Hope is circumstantial. Betrayal, too.”
    He stared down into the water, blinked once.
    “I’m insane.”
    “You think you are.”
    “I’m having a conversation with a body of water.” He furrowed his brow contemplatively. “For the … fifth time, I think?” He looked thoughtful. “Though this is only the fourth time it’s talked back, so I’ve got that going, at least.”
    “It’s only insanity if the water isn’t telling you anything. Is this not a productive conversation for you?”
    “To be honest?”
    “Please.”
    “Even if I could get past the whole ‘standing
on
the ocean talking
to
the ocean’ … thing,” he said, “I’ve had enough conversations with voices rising from nowhere to know that this probably won’t end well. So just tell me to kill, make some ominous musings, and I’ll be on my way to kill my friends.”
    “Friends?”
    “Former friends, sorry.”
    “Former?”
    “Is that how I sound when I repeat everything? The others were right, that is annoying.”
    “There’s no hate in your voice when you speak of them. You don’t sound like a man who wants to kill his friends, former or no.”
    He didn’t listen to himself often, but he was certain he had spoken with conviction last night before he went to sleep. The conversation with another voice in his head—the one cold and clear as the night—had seemed so certain. They went over their plans together, again and again: find Jaga, find the tome, kill everyone in their way, kill the people who had betrayed them.
    Betrayed them … or betrayed him? It was harder to remember now what they had spoken of