The other lands

CHAPTER NINE

Kelis received the messenger outside his tent. The youth was barefoot and lean, his musculature barely adolescent, though he was likely older than he looked. The light of the setting sun caught twinkles in the dust that coated him, the result of the miles of travel that had brought him to Halaly. Kelis, hearing his message and the coded language he used to demonstrate its authenticity, stood a moment, unsure how to answer. He knew a summons when he heard it. There was no other word for it. Sangae Umae, his chieftain, demanded his presence. Though he was loyal to the Akarans and to Mena's unfinished work, he could not ignore the order. Delay, perhaps, but not ignore.

Speaking Talayan, Kelis said, "Tell Sangae that when I am done here I will come to him in Umae. Tell him I have arrived here with Princess Mena only a week ago. We are to attack the foulthing in the lake, but we still have much to prepare. Once we have killed it, I will meet him in Umae." He began to turn away, but the messenger made a clicking sound with his tongue. Apparently, he was not finished.

The boy's left arm was stunted, half the size of the other. Perhaps this was part of why he was a messenger instead of warrior runner. He did not seem ashamed of it, though, and used the small limb to illustrate his words. "Not Umae," he said. "Sangae awaits you in Bocoum. He is there now and prays your feet do not grow hot on the sand before you reach him."

Bocoum? The bustling city of Bocoum was Talayan controlled, yes, but Sangae rarely visited there. He was a village chieftain, not a merchant prince. Respected as he was for having been Aliver's surrogate father, Sangae had as little use for the rich men of Bocoum as they had for him.

"He is at the coast?"

"Even now," the youth said, one corner of his mouth slightly crooked, as if Kelis were a disappointment for not knowing this already. "He stays in the care of Sinper of the family Ou. Sangae wishes me to take you there. I promised to return with you, as quickly as you can run."

The boy had an attitude of playful condescension. He thought too much of his authority as a messenger-which was no authority at all, really. Kelis decided to ignore this show of self-importance for now. He held to a long silence as he thought. Sinper Ou was his host? That made little sense. The Ous were the most ambitious of the city's merchant families. They were wealthy by any standard, and in the strange way of it, they earned their fortune without ever breaking a sweat. They owned the bulk of the rafts the floating merchants leased and took a considerable percentage of their profits. They also owned great swaths of the coastal farmlands, properties they had acquired piece by piece over the generations and now charged for the use of. They controlled more docks than any other family and imposed tariffs on all the goods that crossed them-both those grown on their land and those transported on their rafts. The Ous were not the type of company Sangae usually kept. None of this sounded right.

"Do you know why he summons me?" Kelis's eyes inadvertently lingered on the youth's stunted arm. "Why he sent you?"

"No, I don't know why he wants you," the youth answered, "but he sent me because I am fast. This arm does not slow my legs. It cuts the wind for me."

"I am sure it does-"

"You will have to work to keep up with me," the boy said.

Kelis smiled but said nothing. The boy had heart, at least. He told the messenger where to find food and drink and shelter for the evening, and he promised that he would run with him as soon as he had helped the princess. If she consented to let him go, that was.

Alone later on the hard pallet on which he slept, Kelis could not stop himself from longing for all the possibilities ended by the point of Maeander's blade. Even without outward reminders, being near Mena meant that memories of Aliver were always close. They lay like objects beneath a thin skin of water, sometimes standing out clearly, other times stirred by the current, shaded by clouds, or reflecting the world above like a moving mirror. Aliver's death had never yet felt real to him. He often daydreamed of the boy he had grown strong with, the man he had loved in his quiet way. He contained within himself images and expressions and bits of recalled conversations that seemed more real than the years separating him from those joyful moments. And in his dreams Aliver lived. He stood before him, ironic, aware that he had escaped death and somehow embarrassed to have done so, beautiful in a way that no other person had ever been in Kelis's eyes.

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?"