He always awoke from these dreams confounded. As a boy he had been a dreamer, one of the few who could predict the weather and turns of fortune and make sense of signs brought to him while he slept. His father had despised this gift, for it meant his firstborn son would not be a warrior and would therefore not secure the family's council seat. Kelis's father had managed to beat it out of the young man, jabbing him awake from sleep, making dreaming akin to pain, belittling him as if the gift were a slight to his manhood. Kelis had finally broken when his father adopted another youth to be his firstborn. To his father's delight, Kelis killed the boy, reclaimed his position, and replaced his vision dreams with images of the way he had thrust his spear into his brother's belly and twisted the organs around the point. That is what he had relived for years while sleeping: a nightly punishment.
After Aliver's death, his dreams stopped for a time. He could not remember the moment of the prince's death, either when awake or asleep. It was a blank spot into which he could not see, an emptiness he was reminded of every night, regardless of how filled with life and labor his days were. And when he did begin to dream again-a few months ago-it was of Aliver returned to life. What could that mean? Was there a sign in it that he needed to learn how to read? Might he now become the dreamer that his father-now also dead-had tried to extinguish? Surely, the prince should not be dead. He couldn't be dead! There had been some mistake made, some Meinish treachery that everyone else had been foolish enough to accept.
The night after getting his summons and watching Mena try to comfort the aging chieftain, Kelis did not sleep. Instead, he lay on his mat with his eyes pinned open, imagining journeying south instead of heading north to Bocoum. What if he crossed the great river and sought out the Santoth in the far south? Perhaps Aliver was among them. Maybe that's why he still seemed to live. Or perhaps they could bring him back into life. Maybe they just needed-wanted-to be asked. Aliver had been brave enough to seek the sorcerers out. Perhaps another needed to do the same.
He was thankful when the new day dawned. With the morning breeze and the slant of the sun, the world sprang to life. Mena was a whirlwind of energy, in among the Halaly men like one of them, her voice as loud as theirs and even more in command. She was a sensitive being, Kelis knew, troubled by things she rarely spoke of. But to the world she was at her best when danger neared, all certainty and poise and maybe even a hunger to be face-to-face with peril.
The Halaly had effectively formed a blockade to hem the beast in. Skimmers and other boats were spaced at even intervals, anchored in place and connected with ropes that made an unbroken line. The early hours were spent shuttling crossbowmen, warriors, fishermen, and others out to the various vessels. A steady wind white-capped the water and buffeted the boats, straining them against their anchors. They had chosen this day for the wind, knowing the rhythm by which the air currents shifted and when they blew strongest.
Once all were as near to being in place as they could be over such bobbing, moving expanse, the signal to lift anchor and unfurl their sails issued from the mouths of Halaly horns. The skimmer that Kelis rode in jumped to grab the wind. The sail snapped as it filled, and he had to hold on as the light vessel surged into motion. The craft-two narrow pontoons with a skin platform between and a simple rudder-had a shallow draft and was built for speed. The water they zipped over was no more than waist deep. He could have rolled into the water and stood half wet, risking only to be cut in two by another skimmer. Indeed, they sailed through reeds and marsh grasses, sliced over lily pads and spreading green muck.
It was an impressive sight, but it seemed suddenly wrong. Why hadn't he considered this before? There are too many of us! How could a hundred ships coordinate an attack on one creature while moving at such speed? They would get tangled and crash into one another as they neared it. He wanted to shout out that the plan of attack was flawed. He wished he were with Mena. Surely she was thinking the same and must be trying to convince the Halaly of this. But he was just one of a few in this skimmer. He did not really even have a role here except to be with the Halaly, to do as they did, and to aid the crossbowmen who would be their main weapon.
The lookout perched at the prow of one of the pontoons shouted. He leaned over the water, his arm outstretched and finger pointing. Kelis tried to follow his direction, but he saw only water and a protrusion in the distance that he took to be a small island. But it was just a round mound of earth atop which reeds and perhaps a few short shrubs grew.
Why, then, did it move? Why did it change shape before his eyes, as if the entire island had rolled over and come up with a new topography? Nobody else seemed as confused as he was. They continued to hurtle toward it at all the wind's speed, shouting to one another, their spray-splashed eyes fixed on their target.
He looked again down the line of moving vessels, having no idea anymore where the princess was, hating the knowledge that she could die here just like any of them, just as her brother had. The formation was ragged now, with some skimmers ahead of others. Kelis's vessel was soon behind a few others, blocking his view of the island that was not an island. He wished-although he knew it was not a true wish but one sprung from the moment-that Mena was content to rule from a safe distance, like Corinn in one of her palaces. A strange thought to have here, and not one that he held for long.
When he next saw the creature it was near enough that he could doubt it no more. It dwarfed any living creature he had ever seen. It was comparable to nothing that walked or swam or squirmed. Its girth was like an outcropping of rock, like a hillside or like the island he had first thought it to be. But it was a flippered, scaled mountain of an undulating semi-aquatic monster, like no fish but with parts of fish in it, like no worm and yet wormlike in the grotesque rolling convulsions that propelled it forward. It bristled with scales that peeled as if it were diseased, no real protection as they opened and closed with its movements, the body beneath them as translucent and spotted and slick as the flesh of a squid. It did not swim at all, for the water was far too shallow. It wriggled away from them with the blubbery determination of a seal made huge. Its speed, though, was nothing compared to that of the skimmers.
The foremost of the vessels reached it. They raced along either side of it, tiny on the nearside and hidden altogether on the other. The first crossbowmen launched their barbed missiles made with a hinged construction designed especially for this task. Strong ropes trailed out behind the missiles. It only took a few moments after firing for the lengths of rope to unfurl behind the swift vessels and yank taut to the cleats secured to the skimmers' prows. The line tugged on the missile, but instead of pulling free, the prongs carved quick trenches through the foulthing's flesh. They sank deeper and stuck fast in a matter of seconds.
The jolt when their boats were jerked to a halt sent several soldiers into the water. Others pitched from the prows when the ropes snapped. In two boats the cleats were ripped out, sending splinters of wood flying.
Kelis saw this all in fragments captured by his darting eyes. By the time Kelis's skimmer neared range, a slightly greater order had been established. More crews were remembering to drop their sails as they set the barbs. Several boats-sails again curved with the wind-now strained as the earth's breath pressed them forward. As more flew past the heaving creature the crossbowmen pierced it and pierced it again. Rope after rope snapped taut. Barb after barb set deep.
Before long the beast was being pulled into the shallows behind fifty skimmers, with more joining every minute. It was even more maddened than before. Its great cavern of a mouth rose out of the muck. It gasped and bared row after row of teeth. It looked as if it wished to roar but was instead more ghastly for its lack of a voice.
Kelis aided his vessel's crossbowman by steadying him as he aimed and by pulling him back into the boat as his missile hissed out. He heard the captain shouting orders to the other crewmembers, and he did what he could to aid them. The next few minutes passed in a blur of confused motion and noise and wind. He
was jostled about the boat, had to duck the boom, and nearly toppled into the water. All around them other skimmers cut in and out, colliding in a tangle of ropes and flying bolts, wind slapping cries about. Quite a few lost their lives or broke bones or were otherwise injured; and through most of it Kelis could not tell if their efforts were achieving what they hoped. He knew the water was getting shallower and shallower. He saw that they were cutting through muck now, but it wasn't until the beast itself showed its true fear that Kelis believed they had it.
For some time the foulthing had propelled itself into the shallows, fleeing the skimmers. When it could no longer sink its mouth down to suck from the water, it tried to turn. It heaved and undulated and thrashed about, sending out muddy waves that swamped the nearest boats. It rolled far enough over once that several ships were pulled into the air. Had it kept rolling it could have killed them all.
And still they pulled it on toward the shore, slower now but steady, the wind filling their sails as if it hated the creature as much as they.
When they could go no farther they anchored the ships, jumped into the ankle-deep water and muck, and trudged back toward it, armed with spears and long pikes. Kelis knew that in this-as in most of the day's work-he was but an observer. He stood at a distance and watched as the Halaly took their revenge. The beast was a monster indeed, worse because it had eaten itself and the world around it nearly to death. There was no form to it that could be made sense of, save that the entirety of its bulk seemed built around its great mouth. Ring after ring of teeth pointed inward toward the pink center of the thing. It was, with its voracious appetite, a bringer of destruction, a maker of death by gluttony. It lay gasping, but slowly, slowly it eased toward death. Despite the wounds in it already and the further ones being made by newly cast spears, it was the lack of water to breathe that was to kill it. It was a fish, after all.
Melio came up beside Kelis and shared the spectacle a moment. "If I made you a necklace from one of those teeth," he asked, "would you wear it?"
Kelis turned toward him, reminded suddenly that he had forgotten Mena, but calmed already by his friend's joking tone. "Is the princess well?"
"Of course she is."
Melio gestured with his arm, directing Kelis's gaze toward the tail end of the foulthing. There he made out the figure of Mena, who was using the dangling ropes to scramble her way onto the thing's back. She picked her way over the ridges, through the fins and protrusions, and around the embedded hooks. Behind her came a line of shouting Halaly, their joy obvious in their strides, while many others grabbed hold of the ropes on all sides and tried climbing hand over hand to join her.
"You know," Melio said, "I tell her all the time to be careful, but that's just the man in me that says it, that worries for her."
Melio paused when Mena did. High on the creature, she stood with her feet planted wide, the wind stirring her hair and garments. She set her hands on her hips and silently surveyed the masses churning through the mud all around the island of beast.
"In truth, though," Melio said, "I feel she'll outlive us all. She's half a god after all, right?"
That night Kelis took his leave, explaining to Mena that he had to answer his chieftain's call. He would return to her service as soon as he could. She let him go without question, and in the darkness before the dawn he found the messenger waiting for him outside his tent. He had limbered up already, but before he spoke he reached down, straight legged, and pressed his palms to the hard-packed earth.
"What is your name?" he asked as he came upright again.
"Naamen."
Kelis grinned. "Well, Naamen, are you ready to run?"
CHAPTER TEN
Sire Neen took a perverse pleasure in recalling all the things he knew about the world that the Akarans did not. It was too long a list for him to go through in one sitting, but he often tried. It soothed him. Their ignorance was as much a balm to him as mist was, although combined with the drug's effects it was an even greater balm. Leaguemen had never truly come off mist, not even when Aliver was alive and making the stuff torture people's dreams. For a time, they were plagued by nightmares similar to those of the general populace, but they pushed through them. The drug they used was of much higher quality than what they provided to the masses, and with experimentation they distilled a variation they could again use without torment. For them, the drug was fundamental to every aspect of their lives, as important as water, food, air. Waking or sleeping, for clarity or bliss, to focus or lose oneself completely: mist aided it all.
As he sat in the plush banquet room of the Ambergris, the massive ship they had switched to at the Outer Isles, the thought of lecturing Corinn slicked the leagueman's hands with sweat and stiffened him with pent-up desire. He hated her, and he wished her to know it in her final moments, when she gave everything to the league and they destroyed her. If she had accepted the league's offer to meet the Lothan Aklun herself, he would be beside himself with expectation, luxuriating in the surprise he was about to present her with. Having to settle for Dariel instead was some compensation, and he would do his best to relish what awaited him.
Peppering his hatred was the fact that he also hungered to consume the queen. Often his mist trances were little more than long sessions in which he lectured Queen Corinn Akaran. He stood above her, taking delicious pleasure out of testifying to all the many ways she was not the power she believed. She knelt below him, a slack-mouthed expression of awe on her lovely face, her gestures promises of submission-faithful, subservient, pious submission.
It was no accident that his concubines were chosen for their resemblance to her. They were fine models, really, coiffed and manicured and even altered anatomically at times. He loved it that they were each so alike while also tasting and sounding and smelling and being different. The same and yet different. They were a great pleasure to him. Shame they never lasted long in his service. Shame also that he had opted not to bring one along on this trip. It would not do for Prince Dariel-a whelp he loathed in a different way-to spot her and note the resemblance.
But you should not complain, he thought. Things are about to change completely.
Sire Neen looked around the table in the plush banquet room of the Ambergris, happy that his thoughts were trapped within his skull and could not be read by the roomful of people. They were two weeks out from the isles, already well into the Gray Slopes. The ship rocked with the slightest recognition of their waterborne state, but the room itself was as formally decorated and numerously staffed as a palace. A necessity, as few leaguemen really liked the sea.
A little more patience, Sire Neen thought, and all will be made right. Much will be revealed. Old scores settled. Oh, some will be surprised. Some will be shocked. Saddened. But not I! Not I. Nothing will surprise me. I am the surpriser, not the surprised.
"So we are halfway to the Other Lands," he said, lifting his voice so that it carried through the noise of conversation and dining. "What do you make of the trip so far, Your Highness?"
Dariel, sitting across the round table from him, crooked a grin and spoke to the gathered company of leaguemen, naval officers, imperial officials, and concubines. "I'll admit to being impressed," he said. He played with his food for a moment, absently pushing his uneaten morsels around with the point of his knife. "The Range was like nothing I'd ever imagined. To think that the league has sailed through that all these years."
"It is nothing," Sire Neen said. "Nothing for us, at least. We who truly know the sea."
The prince showed no sign he caught the insult. He shook his head in childlike wonder. "And those creatures today-just bizarre. I'll dream of them tonight, I'm sure."
Sire Neen dipped a spoon in his soup, a clear broth filled with soft morsels of white fish. Holding the spoon halfway to his mouth, he said, "If you wake up screaming, Prince, we'll be sure to send someone to comfort you."
The young woman to the prince's left touched a finger to his wrist and drew a line up his arm. "I'd be happy
to take care of that," she said. "It wouldn't do for the prince to dream of beasts, not when there are more pleasant things to be haunted by."
Dariel cocked his head toward her with solicitous deference but said nothing.
She returned his gaze with an annoying amount of enthusiasm-from Neen's perspective. He had instructed the concubines to be gracious and generous to the prince in everything. He rather wished they did not perform so willingly. He slipped the soup into his mouth. Feigning rapture at the taste, he closed his eyes. He needed a few moments free of the sight of the prince. By the gods, the boy irritated him. So self-satisfied. Such a pretense of innocence and openness, as if he were not a killer of thousands, as if they would ever forget those who died at the prince's hands on the platforms.
Fortunately, there had been a couple of moments when the prince's naive composure had been rattled. Both had been pleasant to witness and were some comfort to remember.
When they had first sailed out onto the wave peaks of the Range had been one such moment. In truth, the sight still amazed the leagueman, even though he had witnessed it scores of times. They were not sure what caused them, but the captains believed that some change in the features far below the surface of the water affected the currents above. Nine days out from the Outer Isles, sailing due west with good winds, the Ambergris-massive as it was to human eyes-had been but a cork bobbing on a gray-black fathomless ocean. They had been days riding swells of thirty and forty feet, but at that unmarked boundary all had changed.
Far below the bottom dropped, or rose, or undulated for all they knew. Whatever caused it, the result at the surface was that the swells rose into peaks, sheer reaches hundreds of feet high. Riding up them was like grinding over stone, slow and painful. The hull of the ship trembled with the effort, and each time Neen had a momentary fear that the boat would slip backward. It never did, though. Cresting the summit, the heavy bosom of the Ambergris thrust far out into the air, spray whipping around those on board like a creature intent on ripping them from the deck. And as the ship tilted onto the slope, the descent switched to a mad acceleration, reaching speeds beyond any seen on land. The Ambergis became a careening leviathan at the edge of control, moving so fast the water around them hissed as if being scorched by the hull's passing. They plunged down until the prow dug into the base of the next wave, submerging the fore portions of the deck for several long moments before slowly rising, righting. Then it began all over again. And again.
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