Page 24 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
I was, in this respect, fortunate to be so close to the beast, since its bulk—roughly equivalent to that of a locomotive carriage—was suchthat it had difficulty manoeuvring round in order to bring its jaws to bear. Thus, I was afforded the opportunity to dig my fingers into its gill slits as it passed, my twofold aim being to discommode the creature enough that it might retreat and, failing that, to give myself some purchase whereby I might hold my body out of its reach. I soon learned, to my dismay, that the skin of a Great Marvosi Shark has more in common with scree or shale than with the soft epidermis of more wholesome animals, and I fear I cut my palms rather badly.
My stratagem nevertheless proved partially successful in that I was most certainly able to excite the shark, and was momentarily able to keep it from either devouring or dismembering me. Regrettably, the creature soon pulled itself free of my grip, taking more skin from my fingertips with it, my blood curling through the water in dark red wisps. As I sought in vain for some form of shelter, the dreadful fish circled around for a second attack. I was, in this moment, conscious that I might very shortly die and was, in all candour, quite sanguine about the fact. My encounter in the Mocking Realm had haunted and disturbed me, for it represented something quite beyond my prior experience. A mere gargantuan killing machine, by contrast, was an eminently comprehensible danger and my time at the Unending Gate had quite inured me to the risk of impending annihilation.
It was some comfort to me that the shark seemed at least a little cautious about coming for me again. I had, if nothing else, given it something to think about. And this hesitation perhaps saved my life, for it allowed my companion, the sorceress Shaharazad Haas, to swim into a position of vantage, take aim, and loose her harpoon into the creature’s left eye. I am relatively certain that sharks are, under normal circumstances, silent, but, owing to my peculiar, and hopefully temporary, symbiosis with the Surfeiting Worm I distinctly heard what sounded like a scream of pain as my erstwhile attacker thrashed about in an ever-growing cloud of its own blood and humours.
Perhaps deciding that easier prey lay elsewhere, the shark turnedaway and slunk off through the murky depths. I watched it depart with a sense of mingled relief and wonder. Now that it was no longer attempting to do me harm I was able, briefly, to appreciate it for the marvellous specimen that it was—a study in grace and ferocity that seemed to embody the indomitable spirit of Marvos.
Ms. Haas, meanwhile, reached into her bandolier and reloaded her weapon. “Well handled, Mr. Wyndham. I have had several companions eaten by sharks in similar circumstances, and I’m sure at least three of them would be alive today had they shown your wherewithal.”
I was somewhat at a loss as to how to reply to this. While it was always gratifying to have one’s competencies acknowledged, I could not help but wonder about the fates of those other unfortunates. I settled on, “Thank you, Ms. Haas.”
“Now come along.” She executed a flawless subaquatic somersault and began swimming downwards.
Our ultimate destination was an overgrown ruin, a once-splendid quarter of Ven fallen long ago to rubble and rebuilt in the intervening years into a haphazard, many-tiered shanty. I trusted that my companion had at least some inkling of the location of our quarry as we made our way through twisting corridors of ancient stone and rotting driftwood, past the tarnished hulls of steamships and starships, and deeper still into tunnels with walls neither concave nor convex, and slick with luminescent algae.
My companion paused by a primitive statue of some bloated, blasphemous deity. “You know, I really should have written down his address. Non-euclidean street maps can be so difficult to navigate.”
“Forgive me for asking, but are we lost?”
“A sorceress is never lost. However, on occasion, her path will show her vistas unfamiliar to her conscious mind.”
“How is that different?”
“I assure you, my dear, it’s much more fun.”
One of Ven’s hulking, ichthyoid denizens emerged from a passageway I was certain had not been there a moment before. “Look,” I said, “why don’t we ask that gentlebeing for directions?”
“I do not need directions. I know precisely where we are not.”
“Excuse me, siram.” I paddled over towards the stranger, employing the formal neutral address that exists in Khelish but not Eyan or Athran, and which my limited knowledge of the inhabitants of Ven suggested was most suitable for such a creature. My understanding of the species’ reproductive biology was minimal (Ms. Haas once lent me a book on the subject, which I left in my room for some days and surreptitiously returned unread), but I was aware that their culture lacked a concept of gender.
It peered at me with its bulbous, unblinking eyes. When it spoke I was aware that the words I heard in my mind were not the sounds it was, in fact, making, but rather an illusion projected by the Surfeiting Worm. “Yeah? What?”
“We are looking for a person by the name of Enoch Reef, who I believe has lodgings in this area. Might you possibly be able to assist us?”
“Aw, mate.” It made a frankly alien gesture with its claws which, in context, I took to signal the particular blend of sympathy and frustration that one reserves for a well-meaning stranger who has naively asked one for assistance with a task whose magnitude they have greatly underestimated. “You’re well out your way. What you want to do is go back up the Tunnel of Lost Souls, take a left round where the Temple of S’uh’faxla’hca used to be ’til it got closed down and they put one of them fancy pubs that do the posh food over it, then that got closed down on account of health code violations. Then you want to take another left, second right, third down, straight ahead, and if you get to a yawning abyss where the mutilated corpses of drowned sailors swirl in a dance of endless torment you’ve gone too far.”
“Thank you. You’ve been most helpful.”
“No scales off my snout.” It kicked its powerful hind flippers and swam off with an alacrity that belied its bulk.
Ms. Haas was bobbing with her arms folded. “It would have been the work of moments to determine that information for myself. But I can’t believe the Temple of S’uh’faxla’hca has closed down. They had the most incredible unholy fornications every ninth new moon.”
With what seemed to be a genuinely wistful air, she reversed course and led me onwards. As I became accustomed to the gloom and the peculiarities of the architecture, I was able to discern more of my surroundings. What appeared from the outside little more than the desolate remains of a fallen civilisation was, in fact, a hive of industry. Much of the industry in question was obviously of a dubious nature, but here and there we saw signs that this otherwise benighted region was beginning to attract the kind of fashionable attention that so often lighted, however briefly, upon such places. Thus a ruined temple filled with worm-addled beggars would sit alongside a bijou kiosk selling hand-curated whelks to gullible visitors in search of an authentically Vennish experience.
Our journey naturally led us to the darker recesses of the district, in both the figurative and the literal senses of that term. So it was that Ms. Haas and I swam through a narrow crack in the side of a great cyclopean stone and found ourselves floating a few short feet from the impaled corpse of a well-dressed young gentleman.
Between a childhood lived under the thrall of a sadistic sorcerer king, an adolescence against the backdrop of bloody revolution, and an early adulthood spent waging ceaseless war against the Empress of Nothing I had seen much of death. As such, I was surprised but not shocked to find a gruesomely skewered cadaver drifting past my nose. Perhaps the fact that I had arrived at my present location as a consequence of following the directions of a talking fish monster and was able to survive only due to the presence of an alien symbiote in severalof my more vital passages also contributed to my perhaps callous-seeming equanimity.
“Oh, dear,” I observed. “How regrettable for the poor fellow. I wonder who he might be and what might have brought him to this unhappy end.”
Ms. Haas would have been tapping her foot had she been standing on a solid surface. As it was, it became an odd sort of waggle. “Really, Wyndham. Do you pay no attention? This gentleman was clearly a student of the University of Khel who was ambushed en route to a meeting with the very Mr. Reef we ourselves are seeking by some third party wishing either him or Mr. Reef harm. He was local, of Athran stock, from a good family whose means have recently diminished. He smoked Professor Lipquist’s filterless cigarillos, was frightened of bees, and kept an Ulveshi shape-shifting parakeet.”
“Surely you jest, Ms. Haas.”
“Not at all. Everything is plain to the trained observer. You said yourself that it was common even in your day for students of the university to sell snippets of gossip to Mr. Reef and his ilk. The man is clearly Athran by his complexion and attire, which would at one point have been the height of fashion but, since his wardrobe has not kept pace with current trends, and since the soles of his shoes are worn nearly through, when any self-respecting gadabout would have replaced them long ago, we can deduce quite simply that he once had means but has access to them no longer. His youth makes it yet more likely he is a student and his presence so close to the lair of an information broker is further evidence that he had need of money. I would therefore stake the reputation I do not, in fact, possess on both conclusions.”
“This is remarkable,” I exclaimed. “But what of the cigarillos, the bees, and the parakeet?”
