"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.