When she woke she was thirsty and pale, but her fever had broken and her stomach was calm. He helped her to her quarters, hopeful that she could spend the next two days before reaching Dendar recovering her strength. But she returned two hours later, dressed in a new gown with her hair neatly braided around her head, creating a thick crown worthy of her title. She looked lovely, but she didn’t look well, and in addition to her fresh clothing, she wore the haunted expression and sunken eyes of things better left unseen.
“Tie everything down, send everyone below, and close the distance with the other ship,” she said, raising her voice to include Lortimer and his crew. They stared at her blankly. Just like the night of the rock slide and the sky before the sandstorm, the water was so peaceful it made her demands ridiculous, even comical.
“What do you see, Majesty?” Kjell asked, and her eyes found his, acknowledging his use of her title.
“I see the ships being tossed and men in the water—men drowning,” she answered firmly. “I don’t know why.”
Captain Lortimer wanted to drop his cargo in Dendar and be done with the lot of them. He was being well paid and the journey had gone without incident despite his fear of Padrig, who treated him with haughty ambivalence. Lortimer could afford to “appease the whims of a royal,” and he shrugged at Sasha’s insistence and allowed Kjell to order his crew about. The sailors followed Kjell’s instructions with suspicious industry, muttering among themselves, but they were dismissive of a mere woman telling sailors what to do. The King’s Guard and the travelers from Jeru, having seen her abilities firsthand, were less inclined to ignore her warnings. The guard set about redistributing the supplies in the hold and securing the stores, and the rest of the voyagers retired to their rooms to pray for deliverance.
They lowered a longboat over the side and sent a messenger across to their sister vessel with a warning to be on the lookout for hurricanes and anything—everything—else. Sasha stood on the deck, her body rigid, her hands gripping the rail, thankfully steady on her feet, her sickness abated, her fear great. And they waited, on edge all day.
The sun was sinking, brushing a shimmer of pink paint across a darkening sea, when Pascal saw something about two hundred yards off the bow.
“Captain, just ahead.” The first mate handed Lortimer his spyglass and pointed at the brilliant horizon.
The emerging dome was so big it created the effect of a large rock rising from the sea before it vanished beneath the surface once more.
“It’s probably a whale,” Lortimer reassured, but he held the glass to his eye a little too long. Something undulated, and the odd projection rose and fell again.
“The whales don’t bother the ships. In these waters, whales are the least of our worries,” Lortimer added.
“Oh yes? And what do you worry most about?” Sasha asked, her eyes glued to the place where the unidentified creature had disappeared.
“Storms. And so far, Majesty, we are doing just fine on that account. I’ve never seen a calmer sea. We could actually do with a little wind.”
The ship rocked suddenly, violently, as if it had scraped its hull against an underwater mountain, barely clearing the highest peak. The boat righted itself and the sailors hugged the masts and rails, peering into the sea to ascertain the threat. Pascal shouted down into the hold for a damage check.
“What are we hitting?” Kjell shouted, dragging Sasha back from the rail. She’d tumbled to the deck and immediately risen again, clinging to the side, trying to see what they’d struck.
The sailor in the crow’s nest, hanging on with one hand while he searched the water with his spyglass, peering through the innocuous lapping, yelled back at him. “Not a damnable thing! There’s nothing there.”
The ship across the way was perfectly upright one moment, and the next, sailors were screaming, the sails tipping. The stern came completely out of the water, sending a few men overboard, and two enormous tentacles—knotted and pocked and as thick as tree trunks—curled around the long bowsprit extending from the vessel’s prow.
“Architeuthis!” Pascal bellowed just as the lookout from the crow’s nest began shouting the same thing.
They watched in horror and helplessness as the giant squid, wrapped around the front of the other ship, began to draw it downward. Shouts and screams accompanied bodies tumbling across the decks and into the sea before the bowsprit snapped with a resounding crack, leaving a jagged spar and temporarily shaking the squid free.
“Bring us closer,” Kjell roared to Lortimer.
Jerick, twined in the rigging of the foremast, dangled above the creature with his bow drawn, doing his best to fire arrows at the glistening head of the beast while being tossed from side to side. Gibbous was inching out on the figurehead, and Peter was clinging to the front of the forecastle deck, stabbing at the clinging tentacles with his spear, attempting to land a fatal blow. Architeuthis, angered and stung, slunk to the starboard side and rose again, entwining two tentacles around the forecastle deck rail. Gibbous was catapulted into the water, and Jerick slipped, losing his bow as he grasped at the knotted rigging, trying not to tumble into the sea. The tentacles seemed to grow as the beast came farther out of the water, its smaller, side tentacles embracing the hull as the larger, front tentacles extended, wrapping around the foremast where Jerick was suspended. Peter, the only warrior in a position to do any damage, jabbed valiantly before being swiped aside like he was nothing more than an irritant. The mast bowed and cracked, and Jerick fell to the quarterdeck and didn’t rise.
Without thought or doubt, Kjell threw himself over the port side, his spear clutched in both hands. Before he hit the water, he heard Sasha scream his name.
Isak, the fire starter, was suddenly in the water beside him, swimming toward the beleaguered ship and the creature intent on bringing her down. Isak couldn’t build a fire in the sea or toss flames from sodden hands, but he began to glow, his arms parting the water in long strokes, drawing the giant eye of the tentacled creature. It watched, almost sentient, and as Isak and Kjell neared, the squid snaked a tentacle around Isak’s luminescent form, lifting him out of the water and toward its bulbous head as if to examine him—or eat him. Isak extended his arms, palms flat, not even fighting the beast as he was drawn inward, face to face. Reaching out, he pressed both of his hands against the massive eye, searing the orb, blinding the creature.
Isak was hurled free, tossed away, end over end, and Kjell filled his lungs and dove deep, for once not fighting his tendency to sink like a stone. He swam downward with his lance, kicking with all his strength and sinking beneath the enormous, flailing squid. Then he rose straight up, his spear vertical and extended, and buried his lance into the mouth located on the underbelly of the beast. It writhed, the spear so embedded a mere foot protruded from the narrow slit.
For a moment Kjell was imprisoned by tentacles, encircled by a rapidly retreating Architeuthis. Then Kjell was free, rising as the beast descended into the darkness of the deep, still blind, still impaled. Kjell kicked toward the surface and the light that glowed there, unsure which enemy had been bested—a massive squid or a ruthless Changer.
The passengers and crew were already climbing into the longboat preparing to descend into the water, and those already in the water were swimming toward the undamaged ship.
He saw Isak being pulled from the water, clinging to a line, conscious and relatively unharmed. The second ship was damaged, the railing broken, the bow split, the bowsprit and foremast snapped in two. There would be no saving it or repairing it on the open sea, and the stores were already taking on water.