Lord of Death, Hear My Plea

Master and pupil came to one of the sources where water bubbled up among the peaks, to flow into the lake below. Yuya had thought the water in Enoch tasted faintly of salt, and now he had some idea why that might have been. He squatted on a mossy ledge between two of the lower peaks and stared down a vertical cave shaft, filled to about ten meters below him with turquoise water that smelled of the sea. Near it on one side was a rock cliff where it seeped slowly out of a few cracks, joining the streams from a few freshwater springs they had stopped to drink from on their way up.

“The water’s really clear, yet I can't see the bottom.”

“There is no bottom. This is the gate to the Abyss.”

“More inviting than I expected. Probably cold, but otherwise, it doesn't look like a bad place for a swim.”

“It is good you think so. Drink deep of your waterskin, then strip down to your smallclothes.”

“I'm swimming down there? I thought you said it was bottomless.”

“The side-passages.”

Once Yuya pulled his tunic off over his head, he peered down the shaft again. It took him a moment to spot the first cavernous mouth in the side, but a second one was obvious once he did, and it became clear all at once they pockmarked the sides all up and down its depth, as far as his gaze could penetrate the water.

“Those lead to air pockets?”

“Some of them.”

“...which ones?”

“Get down there, and listen. The Lord of Death’s voice carries particularly well through these waters.”

“And what do I do once I find an air pocket?”

“Travel as deep as the cave will take you, or at least until it is too dark to tell the difference when you open or shut your eyes. If your eyes adjust and you find you can make out even the faintest outlines, you need to travel deeper. If you had Cain’s eyes, I might have to douse you in an oil to block your life-shine, or else find some luminous spirit and direct its counter-force to changing your eyesight. Keep your own body from lighting your way. But your pure Sethite eyes make this trial easier to arrange. Are you ready now?”

“Ready? I still don’t know what I’m looking for down there!”

“Yourself. But you are not going to find yourself in the way that Lugo noblewoman in Enoch sought to find herself. You must see where you are, and where you must go, with eyes not your own.”

“I can’t say that helps much.”

“It will. You will know when you have succeeded.”

“And I swim back out when I do?”

“It is not forbidden, but you will change, and that often comes with a return by another way.”

Yuya stood, bare of everything but a loincloth. “You’re not much help, it seems.”

“It is not my help you will need. In the name of the Lord of Death, who is the will of Heaven and Heaven’s son the Turquoise Emperor, I plunge you into the Abyss.” With those words, he took Yuya by the shoulders, and pushed him over the edge.

Yuya tumbled. He manage to slide in left-arm-first, avoiding a painful meeting of his belly and the water’s surface, but being immersed all at once in cold, salty water that made his limbs tremble and his eyes sting was a debatable improvement. He fought the urge to kick back for the surface, endured the pain in his eyeballs as he looked around at the caves nearest him. It was not helpful. He could not see more than a couple meters into any of them, had trouble even telling which ones curved up and which down, and after the shock of his entry soon needed to come up for air.

Sauhur had already backed off from the cliff, was nowhere to be seen. Yuya looked down, straight down where the shaft plunged through the very roots of the mountains. The sun was at its zenith, and the view downward was like looking straight down in open ocean, blue becoming black not all at once, but tapering off as the water reflected the light bit by bit.

Perhaps it was a trick of light refracting, or perhaps this shaft opened on some enormous, ocean-sized cavern below, and some great pale form oscillating like a fish moved across its bottom opening. Yuya breathed sharply.

“Lord of Death,” he muttered, shivering, “hear my plea.” Not sure how to address this great and terrible deity, not even sure whether He was to be prayed to formally or communed with in some less structured way, Yuya raised his hands above the water, clapped twice, and held them together in front of his face.

“I have never been very religious. A Shinto custom here, a Christian moral saying there, a few Buddhist mantras when others were listening. But I could never be bothered to devote myself, with all my heart, to anything beyond myself. I couldn’t even muster the effort to commit to atheism. So, knowing that I will disappoint You many times, accept what devotion I can give now. Help me grow, and I will become worthy to be known as Your trusted servant. So please, start by showing me which of these damned caves I need to swim for!”

As soon as he was done speaking, so fast he thought at once that he must have and could not possibly have imagined it, he heard his name coming up in a breezy whisper through the water.

Yuya…

He dove, not bothering to open his eyes, not watching the unfathomable depths below him, merely swimming down and listening.

Yuya.

The sound, if it even was a sound, came from his left, and he paddled hard after it, holding his hands out until he felt an upward-angled rock face. He pulled himself along it, and gulped dusty cavern air.