"You are the mother of Acacia," they intoned raggedly, in different volumes and pitches of voices.
"Say that I am the mother of the empire."
The kneeling group did.
"And remember to pray each day for my health, for should I die, this spring will as well. Betray me," Corinn said, "and your world will dry, shrivel, and burst into flames beneath my sun. This water that I give"-she motioned to the rising body behind her-"I can take away. So say I, and my son." As hard as it was to do, she raised Aaden's arm with hers. For a few moments longer, her eyes moved from person to person, until she was sure that she had made eye contact with them all. Then she smiled and said, soft voiced, "That's the truth, but we are friends here, aren't we? Do not think me angry. I just enjoy speaking the truth. Now drink of this water, friends. It will not cease flowing. Never. Grow your crops, and spread word of the gift I have given Bocoum. I am your queen, and I give this to you."
As the merchants rose and moved toward her, she had to speak over their adulation to announce that she would return to the city now, without the merchant escort. Though they fawned around her until she moved away, it was clear they did not care. They rushed toward the edge of the bubbling tank as soon as she turned her back to them. On her horse again, she rode without looking back. Aaden did, though.
"What are they doing?" she asked.
The boy laughed. "They're acting like children. They are dancing, shouting, and hugging each other. I didn't know you were going to do that! You did magic, Mother, and everyone saw!" He laughed again, and Corinn knew the child in him would have liked to have joined them, to share their giddy enthusiasm, maybe even to jump in and swim. She needed him, though. She could not fall from the saddle. If she did, the Numrek would carry her back to the city, but that wouldn't do.
She began to reach out to touch him, but just lifting her hand from the pommel made her feel she might fall. She returned it, gripping hard and trying to find the swaying balance she needed. It would not be easy, but she knew she could do it if she kept her focus. For that reason, she rode in silence for several minutes.
"Aaden, ride close to me. Watch me carefully."
"Why?" Serious now, the prince drew up near her.
"Doing such a thing as that tires me very much. I need you beside me."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
If the tales were to be believed, she faced a winged monster. A dragon. A lizard thing of such massive proportions that the beating of its wings snapped trees and blew roofs off houses and sent unfortunate people swirling into the air. It swooped down and grasped cattle two and three at a time, flying loops in the air and tossing its prey like a playful cat. It swallowed cattle whole, in midnight. Its jaws and neck convulsed with the grotesque gluttony of a river crocodile. One farmhouse was destroyed when the thing landed atop it, plunging its claws to snatch at the inhabitants within. High up the southern basin entire herds of goats and their minders had disappeared. It had been spotted as far away as Tabith, which was grave news indeed. If it could travel that far, it might soon discover Bocoum and the bounty of human life all around the Inner Sea, including the isle of Acacia itself.
While Mena had focused her attentions on the tenten creature and on the scourge of the Halaly lake, small bands of Talayan runners had narrowed in on the new creature's lair. They compared one sighting with the next, slowly piecing together when it was on an outbound journey from its lair. It had not been easy to track its movements. The thing was aloft, and it could travel much faster than a person could run.
Still, they managed it, and because of their work Mena was awakened one morning to the news that it had landed a mile away from her new camp. She was up and jogging the distance with her officers immediately. Melio and the rest of her force followed, bearing with them the tools they would need and traveling with stealth. They were in a shallow dale west of Umae, in a land that benefited from the moisture that evaporated from the great lake, blew north on the winds, and then settled nightly to condense among the orchards and pastures that distinguished the country. The marching was easy, the cover good. The Talayan trackers, aided by local farmers and herders, moved them along in the shade of trees, using the lees of hills and the shelter of brush-banked streams.
In no time at all Mena approached the last group of spotters, men and boys with their fingers to their full lips. They indicated with gestures that they were near the top of a hill. Another few paces and she should crawl the last few feet and look over the edge. She did as they advised, awkwardly, with her sword at her side and a waist pack of supplies nestled against the small of her back. She ended elbow to elbow with a herd boy on one side of her and a Talayan tracker on the other.
"Look carefully and you will see it," the Talayan said.
All she saw at first was a wide vale filled with short, rounded, evenly spaced trees. A stream traced a meandering line through the center of it, and here and there she could tell the vegetation had been managed, lanes left open, ponds dug as water catchments. It took her a moment to spot any movement among the tranquillity of the scene, but then a serpentine head moved between two trees. It was there for a second and then gone, and so far away on the other slope of the vale that she was not sure of what she had seen. Squinting, Mena followed it, and was looking in the right spot to see its head rise above the crown of one tree, cock to the side, and, with gingerly precision, nip at the foliage. And then it was hidden again.
Something about what she had just seen sent tingles over her flesh. There was fear in the reaction but a hint of something else also. "What are those trees?" she asked. "How tall are they?"
The local boy whispered an answer in Talayan, two words that Mena repeated. She was quite fluent in the language, but she was constantly being thrown by the Talayan tendency to name things through descriptive use of other words. "Blood… heart?" she asked.
The tracker lying on the other side of her cupped his hand to her ear. "You don't call it blood heart. It's orange in your language, but orange with red inside. The trees are two men in height, some a little more."
"What's it doing here? Is its lair near here?"
He creased his dark-skinned forehead. "No, I don't think so. It just landed here. We did not expect it."
"Just a coincidence, huh?" Mena muttered. She squirmed forward a few more inches and looked back at the orchard.
When she spotted the creature again, it was somewhat closer. It stepped into a lane and paused, raking its head from side to side and then freezing. It was lean and light on its four feet. In that position it must have been no more than a person's height, but that changed when it reared up on its back legs and took in the orchard-again going still as a statue-from a higher vantage. She could see the reptile in it. It was there in the sinuous lines of its neck and the blue patches along its back and in the long, whiplike expanse of its tail. It was, she thought, akin to the sand lizards that lived right in the huts of Talayan villagers. Its eyes were shaped just like those of the harmless creatures. They were larger by many times, but their size did not completely obscure their origins. She had once thought them curious eyes, innocent, fearful, and yet full of mischief.
There was an avian quality to the creature as welclass="underline" flares around its neck that seemed like feathers, a crest on its forehead that snapped forward and back with a mind of its own, like the plumage a peacock displayed. When it bobbed its head the motion was comical, like both the tiny lizard it reminded her of and the motion of birds. It moved into the trees again, hunting the juiciest oranges, apparently.