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“Obviously,” Rushu said, “they hoped we’d find the fake one, then leave, assuming the Oathgate lost.”
Lopen halted in place. The words sank in. This idea he swallowed, but it tasted terrible.
“This was like . . . a failsafe,” he whispered. “So if someone reached the island, they’d find nothing useful.”
“But we outthought them!” Rushu said. “I’ll have to remember to thank Brightness Rysn for her timely note. It—”
“Rushu,” Lopen interrupted, fishing out the gemstone Huio had given him. It wasn’t blinking. “You’re a genius.”
“Clearly.”
“But you’re also a storming fool. Gather the sailors, stay here, and try not to get killed.” With that, he went dashing back up the steps, pulling in Stormlight. He took to the air immediately, zipping out of the city and toward the beach.
Whoever was watching this place, they’d gone to great lengths to prevent them from arriving. But once that plan had been foiled, they’d probably been willing to let the expedition gather up fake gemhearts and sail away. So long as they didn’t find the real secret of the island.
But he and Rushu had done just that. Which meant the entire group was in serious danger, even if Huio’s gemstone wasn’t blinking. He needed to get to the others quickly.
He was glad for his instincts. Because when he arrived at the beach, he found Huio being eaten by a monster. And that wasn’t the sort of event a cousin should miss.
Rysn’s first clue came as a curious sound. A clicking, like moving carapace?
She’d been waiting for a rowboat to return to take her to join the shore team. She wanted to inspect the greatshell remains there, see if she could spot anything that gave her a clue on how to help Chiri-Chiri. Now, she turned around in her seat on the quarterdeck and looked toward the strange sound. Had Chiri-Chiri returned?
But no. This sound she was hearing was too loud to be made by one creature. It was . . . the sound of hundreds of legs moving at once.
What she saw in the water made her feel as if she’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. Hundreds of cremlings—crustaceans smaller than a person’s fist—were crawling out of the ocean and up the side of the ship. And each seemed to be carrying a piece of flesh on it. She even spotted one with an eyeball on its back.
Had these things ripped apart a person? Were they carrion feeders? Something worse?
She screamed, but did so a fraction too late to be of help—for a shout went up across the ship’s deck. Sailors on watch called out as the water around the Wandersail boiled, spitting out thousands of similar cremlings. Clacking and chittering and scrambling as they swarmed up the sides of the ship.
Violet fearspren gathered at Rysn’s feet. Never before had she felt more trapped by her inability to walk. Cord muttered something in Horneater and backed away. Rysn, however, had to unstrap herself before she could escape.
She was too slow. Her trembling fingers didn’t seem to work as she fought with the buckles. The strange cremlings flooded over the side railing.
She finally got the belt undone, but by then the things were swarming all around her. She couldn’t flop onto the deck and crawl away. She’d be overrun. Instead she tried to pull herself farther up into the seat.
However, instead of crawling up her legs and attacking her, some of the cremlings pooled on the deck nearby. Then, in a bizarre display, they began to fit together. Like people grabbing hands and forming a line, the cremlings interlocked their wriggling legs, putting their backs outward. The bits of flesh and skin on them fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
Humanlike feet formed, then legs. Cremlings crawled up, pulling together into a writhing heap that became a torso—then finally the full figure of a nude man, lacking genitals. The head came last, eyes popping into place as cremlings squeezed inside the “skull.” Lines of tattoos hid the seams in the skin.
For a moment, the look of it was nauseating—the figure’s stomach pulsed with the creatures moving within. Lumps twitched on the arms. The skin of the legs split as if sliced open, revealing the insectile horrors within. Then it all seemed to tighten and settle down, and appeared human. A near-perfect likeness, though the lines across the stomach and thighs were far more visible than the ones on the hands and face.
“Hello, Rysn,” Nikli said. He smiled, and his face creased along lines she now knew weren’t merely wrinkles, but splits in the skin. “Your expedition has, unfortunately, proven very persistent.”
Storms. Nikli wasn’t a man or a Voidbringer. He was something worse: one of the gods from Cord’s stories, a monster from Jasnah’s tales. An abomination made up of hundreds of tiny pieces pretending to be a single entity.
Cord put her hand on Rysn’s shoulder—making her jump—then stepped deliberately forward to position herself between Nikli and Rysn. The Horneater woman spoke in her musical language, and the creature—remarkably—responded in kind.
“Cord?” Rysn whispered, trembling. “What is happening?”
“I did not realize . . .” Cord whispered in Veden. “The Gods Who Sleep Not . . . they can appear as people.”
“Do you know how to fight one?”
“I told you, you cannot,” Cord said. “Lunu’anaki—he is trickster god—warned of them during my grandmother’s time when she was the watcher of the pool.”
“We had not expected to find one of the Sighted on this trip,” Nikli said in Veden. “You have long guarded Cultivation’s Perpendicularity. It is regrettable that you joined this expedition. We do not kill your people lightly, Hualinam’lunanaki’akilu.”
Some of the other swarms formed into similar individuals on the deck, though several remained scuttling masses. The captain gathered the remaining ten or so sailors, but they were quickly surrounded by the strange creatures. Storms. The men had grabbed spears, but how did you fight something like this? One man stabbed a creature that drew close, and the spear stuck straight through the body, then cremlings began to swarm out of the body cavity along the spear’s length.
“Stop this,” Rysn said, finding her voice. “Nikli, let us negotiate. Please, tell me what you want.”
“All opportunity for negotiation has passed,” Nikli said softly, looking away—a very humanlike gesture of shame. “You ignored my warnings, and your friends on the island did not take the bait we offered them. That was your last chance to escape safely, and some of us argued long to give you even that chance.
“But you are persistent, as I said. Some of us knew it would come to this. Some who are less idealistic than I. For what it is worth, Rysn, I’m sorry. I genuinely enjoyed our time together. But the very cosmere is at stake. A few deaths now, however regrettable, will prevent catastrophe.”
Cord shouted something at Nikli in Horneater, and he retorted, sounding angry, then turned to shout toward the others on the deck.
“That was a distraction,” Cord whispered to Rysn, turning. “Be ready. Hold your breath.”
“Hold my—”
Rysn yelped as Cord grabbed her around the waist. The tall woman heaved Rysn over her shoulder, leaped onto the chair, then launched them over the side of the ship toward the dark waters beyond.
