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."