by Warren Fahy
Trevin sat at his table, which was hastily set upon the musicians’ dais. Lelinair sat on his left. The musicians moved in front of the dais, which would cause complications, but lo, they moved! Trevin saw Artimeer ordering them away and waving his arms as he came walking through them in his black-and-white robes. The old philosopher then climbed the stairs to the dais and took his seat to Trevin’s right as all others waited for an invitation.
“Thank you for joining me, Artimeer, my friend,” Trevin said.
“I am very pleased,” Artimeer said with a smile perpendicular to his long face.
Trevin’s attendants asked him to choose the rest of his guests of honor for his table. He invited first Neuvia’s mother to sit on Neuvia’s left.
Already offered courtly gowns by many of the wealthy matrons present, the proud cook would not have it. Like her daughter beside her, she wore the green dress of the Royal Cooks, which was better than any fancy frock to Nardleen Fenstridol.
Nardleen’s husband, the only man she would ever love, had died when Neuvia was only five years old, leaving them both on hard times. They had been forced to leave their farm and journey south to work as house cooks in the bustling city of Gwylor. Having been trained in the superior northern disciplines of cooking, which made the most of many seasonal ingredients due to the hardships faced by its practitioners, Nardleen quickly found employment in the most fashionable houses of Ameulis, and her daughter had dazzled the old gentry with her dark brilliance, a black diamond. After Selwyn had sampled a feast at a prominent Gwylorian’s mansion where they had been hired the King inquired for the cook. And the hosts winced as he stole Nardleen and Neuvia with a royal offer. Selwyn had seen in the young Neuvia’s spirit how fortuitous it might be to have such a young woman on the Dimrok when his son one day returned.
“Might I suggest that you ask the mayors of at least nine cities of Ameulis to dine with you, my lord, including Poladoris Martharr, the Mayor of Gwylor,” said Artimeer.
Poladoris was the famed sculptor who had fashioned statues of Trevin’s mother and other relatives of his. Trevin remembered him vaguely now as a cheerful man with a face like an owl. Trevin agreed, and also asked representatives of Norlania to his table, for he knew that in his grandfather’s time Norlania was united with Ameulis and that it was proper they be honored, today. Artimeer nodded his approval as the son of Queen Ryndillym Skyaarmindu-Kaaryn herself, Rollum Skyaarmindu-Kaaryn, came forward, a sturdy and handsome prince whose thatch of blond hair was parted in the middle and swept to each side over wide green eyes.
Trevin next invited Nil Ramesis, Karlok Isopika, and the bald mariner with the blue eye stippled on his head, Lince Neery-Atten, to sit across from him.
When all were seated and served, an attendant brought Trevin his father’s golden diamond-lensed telescope to him, and Trevin rose with Neuvia and strode to the edge of the dais.
He raised his hands, one holding the gleaming spyglass and the other gesturing to the revelers on the field.
The audience quieted as Trevin gazed through the wrong end of the telescope and aimed it at the chalky Lightstone Tower behind them that reached so high in the sky it seemed to lean over them with the curve of the sky.
After a long minute a ring of the tower near the top seemed to glow, spinning colors as a muffled thunder rippled the stars above them. “Now, Ameulintians: behold!”
Four glowing forms appeared like firebrands in the sky almost at the compass points: a blue ship, a white horse, a red bird, and a yellow lion. The horse galloped, the ship sailed, the bird flew and the lion pounced around the horizon in different directions. And the stars in the sky seemed to detach from the world!
Yells, whoops, and a general terror spread as many lost their balance and grabbed each other, afraid that they might be flung off the face of the earth as the whole island seemed to spin.
“It is only an illusion,” Trevin reassured them with a calming hand. “Only we on the Dimrok, in this field, may see these symbols racing round the sky tonight! But watch closely. Five times the horse will replace Niveron in the north. And when it does, all must say ‘cheers’ or drink twice what’s in their cups!”
The Ameulintians had witnessed festive illusions Selwyn conjured before, but never anything as sensational. There was a hubbub as the guests plunged into a controversy of wagers, and the relocated musicians struck up a lively waltz to suit the contest.
“There—you missed it!” Trevin cried. “All must drink!”
Neuvia looked at him in awe as she rallied her confidence.
The smell of roasting meats and onions and garlic braised with honey and spices wafted over the lawn. Servers presented two broiled lobsters as big as men, and Trevin’s table was soon covered with trays of black breads and pots of honey-butter, platters of green spear vegetables, tureens of white-nut gravy and bowls of colorful sliced fruits.
Trevin noticed a woman standing below the dais, her hands hitched upon her hips as she regarded him with open scorn. She was dressed in a fitted jerkin, tight trousers and short boots with a short crimson leather cape around her shoulders. Her white blouse revealed an elegant necklace of gold and moonstones and her auburn hair matched her eyes, which commanded attention even as they dismissed it. A pulse of fear chilled his blood to see the look in her eyes.
Trevin saw Karlok elbow Nil. “There’s your girl, Nil!”
“She won’t look at me,” Nil muttered. “Let alone talk to me, Karlok. You know that.”
“Balls!” Lince waved at the girl. “This young gentleman wishes to say hello!” he shouted, flashing a grin.
The woman looked straight at Lince, crumpling him, and then walked away.
“Good night! I see what you mean, laddy.”
“What have you done to earn that, Nil?” Trevin wondered.
“It’s what I haven’t done, I’m afraid,” Nil said.
Artimeer whispered, “She is Lelinair Martharr, the Mayor of Gwylor’s daughter.”
Trevin nodded as the name rang a distant bell.
Lince chuckled. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, son.”
“I know,” Nil nodded.
“I’ll invite her to my table,” Trevin said.
“No, Liege,” Nil answered. “I don’t wish to dig my hole all the way to Sentad.”
“Indeed!” Trevin glanced at Neuvia. “As you wish.”
As the evening progressed, Lince pasted Trevin with one boisterous toast after another, and Trevin, for his part, clanked the seadog’s mug every time, matching him late into the night. At last, at Artimeer’s urging, Neuvia kissed Trevin’s ear: “My lord, if you drink any more we won’t be able to make love tonight, which is customary.”
This helped Trevin get a grip on himself and a fork to eat some food.
But Lince managed to hammer him with one more salute. “To Trevin and Neuvia and everyone in the whole woolly-wolly-wonderful world!” The mariner swooped his pewter mug against Trevin’s tankard with a foamy thunk! and Trevin drank to it.
“I think that’s the toast to end all toasts, Mariner,” Artimeer said, bending an eyebrow like a crossbow and zinging a glance at the bald seaman. The old philosopher gripped the table’s edge as the circling apparitions in the sky made the world too unsteady for his sensibilities.
“Say no more!” Lince said. “I know the royal lad has more to attend to than grog with a fine young molly like Neuvia waiting for him.”
“That will do,” Artimeer warned.
Neuvia laughed. “He’s blushing, Artimeer.” She laid her hand on Lince’s big hand that seemed like a rough crab’s claw. “Good night, dear sir.”
Lince grinned at Artimeer.
“A walk will do you good, milord,” Neuvia whispered in Trevin’s ear. She nodded at Artimeer, who sat back in relief.
The cheers of the celebrants rose at the fifth and final alignment of the heavenly specters. And, with a last peal of faraway thunder, the true sky was restored to everyone’s relief.
<
br /> All finally staggered away under the silver lamp of the Second Moon, which smiled like an usher over the well-wined and dined delegates, lighting the way to their beds.
Trevin observed the effects of beer now, which he had never experienced before, and identified the distortions to his senses, reweaving his mind to compensate. By the time he and Neuvia returned from their stroll, he felt revived.
Together they climbed the tower’s long stairway, buoyant in anticipation of what awaited them, pausing only to tease each other and spy discreetly on the rooms they passed. As they crossed the royal servants’ floors, an old matron spotted them. “Please wait, me Lord!” shouted Benelvia, coming to her door.
Trevin waited with Neuvia on his arm as Benelvia, her face craggy as a dry mudflat with a nose like a cactus put her knobby hands on her wide hips. “Will me lord be spending the night with me lady?” she asked.
Trevin sighed. “Since I am sure it’s customary you know the answer, yes. But why do you ask it, might I ask?”
“Well, me lord!” She smiled. “I put a new bed in your father’s room, a little perfume on the linens, freshened it up, and lit a new candle there, too, just for you, as your father told me to.” She winked. “It’s your room now.”
Trevin leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, mum.”
Neuvia reached out and took Benelvia’s hand. “Thank you, Ben. We’ll remember this night and you, so fondly.”
They ran up the stairs then under the soft regard of the royal matron.
And soon they lay in each other’s arms, with no ornament or regal raiment or person between them at last as they treasured the jewels of their eyes, the pearls of their teeth, the sable of their hair and the silk of their skin. And Neuvia’s sight pierced the lightstone at the same time as his did, and they floated, it seemed, among the stars.
Chapter 6
Knot
The White Shark slid into the next swell and cleaved it like an ax spraying sawdust. The carved shark under her bowsprit foamed at the mouth as it rose from the sea.
Neuvia stood on the main deck, wearing black woolen tights and a black leather waistcoat adorned with yellow feathers. High boots of deep green chameleon covered her calves. A gray fur cape of an ancient forest bear was clasped with a square emerald at her neck over a black silk blouse—all gifts from her new subjects.
She stood beside Trevin at the starboard rail, conversing with the officers and crew as the White Shark furrowed the rugged sea.
Lince, the first mate, champed at the bit.
Nil Ramesis wore a nervous grin.
But the Captain, Karlok Isopika, was subdued. “The seas are a bit rough today, lord. Bear it in mind,” he said. “What are we fishing for today?”
“Excuse me, Lord Trevin,” said a short and wide man, who wore a purple velvet cape on his broad back and rich raiment. He was tanned, mostly bald, and wielded an imposing charcoal mustache under a regal nose. An amber gem studded one of his earlobes. “I am Bulgar Bedrosium, owner of this vessel. And I hope that whatever we do fish for won’t cause too much damage, if you please.”
“Of course,” Trevin said, smiling and shaking his hand. “The Crown will compensate you for all damages.”
Bulgar looked more worried then, and Neuvia saw her fiancé’s eyes glitter like obsidian as the ship bashed into the slathered shoulders of royal blue. Her single broad sail rippling and cracked atop each swell.
“Is there a beast of infamous history in your waters, Captain? Is there a terror, in memory or legend, that has earned the wrath of men, tallying intolerable crimes against mariners without justice? Come, say frankly that monster’s name. Let’s fish for that today.”
The men harrumphed.
“There’s Knot!” Lince blurted.
Some groaned, seeming to doubt him.
Nil shook his head. “Knot’s been dead for centuries if she was ever born at all, Lince.”
“Tell that to old Schrombo Tubblebee, who had the misfortune of being crushed in Knot’s jaws not five years ago off Loggers Port in a rowboat!” Lince said. “And a dear friend he was!”
Karlok groaned, “Oh, Lince.” He shook his gray head. “Knot’s a myth and nothing more.”
The crew laughed and Bulgar suddenly looked hopeful.
“Knot lives, Captain!” Lince protested. “Ancient and slow, sure—but cleverer she is now and sneakier than ever as she snatches sailors in the night when the waves are rolling like her own black coils. Knot’s the same serpent who stole Gieron from his people a thousand years ago, Lord Trevin. Aye, legend has it she swallowed his skiff and took him down as a trophy for her mountain of pretty skulls, which she tends in her sea-crag down below!”
“’Tis a popular legend, lord,” Artimeer groaned, shrugging as he clutched the ship’s rail.
Lince gaffed a look at the old philosopher. “It’s true.”
Artimeer rolled his eyes. “I must retire below for the duration of the day’s activities…” Bowing his head, he crossed the heaving deck straight as a stayline to the aftercastle as the ship rolled over a new set of swells.
“What shall it be, then, lord?” Karlok asked.
Trevin produced a pink stone from his trouser pocket and held it for a moment with his eyes closed. Then he grabbed the rail with his left hand and threw the pebble far out onto the sea, where it skittered into the depths, like a meteor.
“What did you tell the stone, lord?” Bulgar wondered.
“To challenge the mightiest beast with the greatest hatred of men wherever it lurks in the depths and inlets and grottoes of Ameulis: to fight a duel with the White Shark.”
“I see…”
“Knot!” Lince said.
“Was I too bold, Captain?” Trevin asked.
“Perhaps!” Karlok said, for he had learned to put few limits on the sea.
“I suggest we ready what gear we have to greet whatever answers, then,” Trevin said.
“AVAST!” Lince bellowed. “Man the harpoon and ready the longboats! Haul out the net and run it out starboard!”
“Haul in the starboard sheets and cut a circle nor’ward, helm,” Karlok yelled.
Lince seized the line at the head of the starboard crew, like a crab.
“Ho, Captain!” Garello cried from the crow’s nest. “Whitecaps off our starboard bow, making hot for us!”
“Double-check it, Mister Sowernut,” Karlok shouted.
“Aye, Captain! I see ’em, too!” the eagle-eyed Sowernut confirmed from the fo’c’sle at the top of a wave.
“Well, I hope you know what to do now!” Bulgar said to Trevin, frowning as he gripped the rail beside him.
“He does!” said Neuvia. “Do you?”
“Fear not,” Trevin said, aiming his father’s golden spyglass north and glimpsing the row of dark fins paddling like a galley’s oars through the side of a wave.
Two longboats shoved off from the White Shark, drawing a weighted net on blue-glass floats and stretching it in a northward embrace. The crew manning the boats gripped pikes and gaffs as they peered nervously atop each foamy swell.
A faint gray thing that seemed older than color twisted into the daylight out of the water before plunging back under the sea. The croaking seabirds that made their living following the ancient sea-worm filled the air with a hungry clamor.
“What sort of beast was that, Captain?” Trevin asked, excited.
Karlok glanced at Lince. “Knot.”
“Aye,” Nil confirmed.
“I told you so!”
“Oh, Hala!” Bulgar clapped his eyes.
Lince’s glee was soon chilled as they saw the vast creature twisting like a gray ghost into the center of the net the men had spread, for she was vast, at least four times the length of the ship. Curves of her serrated spine sliced creamy scars on the surface of the water as she coiled now before them, and they gasped as her pointed nose stabbed out of the sea and revealed a violent frown of jagged teeth as wide as Nil was tall. The
monster’s head was coated with a thick and misshapen rind of barnacles. Two orange octopus arms rose from the water and coiled to either side of her gnashing jaws. Her gigantic and terrible eyes, yellow-brown like kelp, fixed the crew like a riptide.
“Man that harpoon you invented, Nilly!” Karlok cried. “Aim it true, at her eye!”
The monster, having fixed its eyes on Trevin, moved its gaze to Nil as he ran across the deck to the stern and sat in the harpoon, swiveling it toward the beast. Nil cranked the mechanism to aim the shaft as it fixed her eye on his.
“Should you send her away, lord?” Bulgar cried.
“This beast must be very old and clever,” Karlok said.
Trevin thought he saw a crimson light sparkle in the eye of Knot that still held his gaze. “Hold your fire,” he murmured. Then the beast fastened both of her giant eyes on Nil.
“Now!” Trevin shouted.
But Nil was caught in the glare of the leviathan, whose striped arms coiled in mesmerizing flourishes about her head. Then she quickly slipped down under the water and passed beneath the net and beneath the White Shark.
Everyone ran to look over the port side, but the sea was dark.
Nil shook off the chill of her gaze and swiveled the harpoon at the stern.
Bulgar clutched the ship’s rail, cringing as a flash streaked through the water. Suddenly, the ragged birds that clung to the rigging above scattered.
Knot shattered the surface of the sea like a glistening pillar arching over the ship as her coiling arms grasped at her mast.
Caught off guard, his pride scalded, the young Cirilen raised a hand and then rapidly spoke, “Kair Talo Ga!”
A thunderclap exploded over the ship, and the serpent was pushed higher into the sky—enough for Knot’s outstretched arms to miss catching hold of her rigging with their curling tips. She snapped her jaws six feet from Garello in the crow’s nest as she fell on her back. She came down to meet the sea off the starboard rail between the longboats and the White Shark’s waiting net.
Knot’s arms groped wildly and she lifted her tail, swathed in black netting as she beat the waves in fury.