Destiny's Lovers (26 page)

“If the Chon will accept me,” Osiyar told
Tarik, “we may be able to use them to search for your friend long
before I am strong enough to try.”

“Then get well,” Alla said. “I know Reid is
alive. I am absolutely certain of it. Osiyar, I beg you, recover
quickly and use all your powers to help us find my cousin.”

For Janina, the greatest terror lay in the
period between the setting of the moons and the rising of the sun.
During that dark time she expected the sea monster to attack at any
moment. When the sun finally rose, she could hardly believe she and
Reid had lived to see daylight come. As soon as it was light enough
to see clearly, she scanned the water astern of the boat, and then
all around it. She saw nothing but wind-driven waves. The monster
had disappeared. That made her even more apprehensive. On the sea,
the monsters ruled, and they would never let their prey elude them.
Janina thought the creature was tormenting them, biding its time,
letting them think they could out-sail it.

There was no way they could escape by land,
either. Any attempt to beach the boat would be prevented by the
enormous grey-brown cliffs, weathered and barren, that soared
straight out of the water to a height so far above them that Janina
felt like a tiny speck against their chilling grandeur.

“They are at least two thousand feet high,”
Reid told her when she asked him about the cliffs. “Look at the ice
in the crevices and along the shore. That’s a sign that we are
nearing the cape.”

They entered an area of floating ice, and
Reid sent her forward with the long fish spear, telling her to try
to push the huge chunks aside. Each time she leaned over the bow,
Janina expected the sea monster to snatch her from the boat. She
gritted her teeth to stop them from chattering and without
objection followed Reid’s instructions. If they were going to die
at any moment as she believed, then she would spend those last
moments pretending to a bravery she did not feel, so Reid would
never know of her cowardice.

She drew a long breath of relief when they
sailed into open water again, with only an occasional tall iceberg
to be seen far out in the deepest water. By now it was much colder,
and the cliffs edging the coast were completely covered in ice and
snow. It seemed to Janina that the icily beautiful world was
entirely composed of the cold blue of sea and sky and the
glittering white of the land.

They reached the cape late in the day. The
high cliffs ended in a tumble of ice-rimmed rocks and crashing
waves, swirling whirlpools and unexpected changes in current. Reid
took a wide course around this dangerous, northernmost end of the
continent, sailing so far out into the sea that Janina’s teeth
began to chatter again, this time with fear and cold combined. Then
he swung the boat southward, tacking into the wind, fighting his
way across the sweep of the current they had been riding, which
continued its northward direction beyond the end of the cape.

The land looked no more hospitable on this
side of the cape, and now, with the wind blowing against them, they
were not making the rapid progress Janina would have liked. But
they would soon be in a different part of the sea, and still the
monsters had not claimed them. She allowed herself to begin to hope
they might be spared. When Reid sent her below to rest, she had no
trouble falling asleep.

When she awakened, it was morning again and
they were uncomfortably far out at sea, tacking toward land. She
could only make out the part of the shore that lay at sea level.
The higher land was covered with heavy fog and clouds.

“It will rain soon,” Reid said. “I have a
feeling there is going to be a bad storm. I would like to find a
protected inlet or a river. I don’t want us to be blown back to the
cape and dashed onto those rocks.”

His face was pale and lined with fatigue, but
Janina knew that she was not a skillful enough sailor to have taken
the tiller to round the cape the day before while he rested, nor to
sail the boat now under the present conditions. Still, she could
see they had to stop somewhere soon so that Reid could sleep.

At least she could serve as lookout. She
watched the shoreline, searching for a place where they might land.
She saw nothing but the same grey-brown rock everywhere she looked.
She turned back to tell Reid - and stopped with her breath caught
in her throat. She could not move or speak, she could only stare
transfixed in horror at the thing she had feared for most of her
life, ever since it had killed her parents. It had come for her at
last. Her heart quaking within her, she saw the sea monster rise
out of the water just off the stern of their boat.

It was huge. The half of it she could see was
as wide as three men standing side by side and twice as tall as a
man. It was even more hideous than she remembered, covered with
dark gold scales, its green eyes bulging at either side of its
snakelike head. Below its sloping shoulders and long slender neck,
appendages similar to fins were extended to hold it steady in the
water. At each side of its great, gaping mouth, twin tentacles
writhed, searching the air for the food it would scrape into that
moist orange maw. The tentacles were reaching toward Reid, who had
not yet seen the danger behind his back.

Janina was unable to give voice to the scream
that would have warned Reid of the presence of the creature or told
him it was moving closer to him. She remembered in anguish how
quickly her parents had died, before any warning could be given.
She knew it would be the same for Reid if she did not act at
once.

Her realization of the monster’s presence and
of what it was about to do took only an instant. An instant more
and the terrified paralysis that had held her in its grip
disappeared. Never taking her eyes off the monster, she reached for
the fish spear she had left in the cockpit the day before, picked
it up and ran the few steps to Reid’s side.

He must have thought she had lost her mind
and was trying to stab him with the fish spear. He ducked, moving
the tiller sharply and sending the boat wheeling in a half-circle.
The sudden maneuver saved him. When the monster lunged, he was out
of reach of the tentacles. But he was safe only for a moment or
two, until the creature tried again.

Janina went sliding across the deck, the fish
spear still in her hand. Reid caught her arm, pulling her to safety
when she would have tumbled overboard.

“Damnation!” By now he had seen the monster,
too. “Get down and hold on!”

He swung the tiller again. The boat heeled
over. With a crack of wind the sails filled suddenly, pushing the
starboard side of the boat even lower into the water. Janina
screamed as the sea poured into the cockpit.

It was the monster that righted the boat. It
crashed across the port railing, lunging at Reid a second time, and
its weight stabilized them.

Miraculously, Janina still held the fish
spear. Though terrified, she was determined to protect Reid. Not
thinking at all about her own safety, she jabbed at the monster
with the spear, stabbing it just below one eye. In a pool of
foaming black blood, the monster slid back into the sea, where it
lay wallowing on the surface beside the boat. Standing in the
cockpit, ankle-deep in sea water, weeping and shuddering, Janina
clutched the fish spear with white-knuckled fingers.

Reid was still at the tiller. The sails were
empty now and flogging wildly as the small boat faced directly into
the wind. With their forward motion slowing to a stop, they began
to roll and pitch on the rough sea.

“We’re in irons,” Reid muttered. “We’re going
nowhere. Janina—”

Before he could finish the order he intended
to give, she pointed in horrified silence. There, in the sea behind
Reid, was a second sea monster.

One glance over his shoulder showed Reid the
source of her renewed terror. She could see by his face that he was
frightened, too. He leapt away from the tiller just as the monster
raised itself out of the sea and, with a loud sound of splintering
wood, thrust itself across the stern.

Two tentacles wrapped themselves about Reid’s
left ankle. Two more fastened around his right leg at the knee, and
the huge creature began to draw him toward its mouth. At the same
time it began to sink back into the sea, the weight of its body
lowering the stern to a level dangerously close to the water. A
wave splashed over the stern and into the cockpit. Reid caught at a
line with desperate strength, pulling hard, swinging the sail to a
new position as the monster relentlessly dragged him closer to the
stern and that waiting, open mouth. His face contorted with pain,
Reid held on to the line, fighting the inexorable pull of a
creature many times his size.

Janina began jabbing at the tentacles with
the fish spear. Her fear was gone. All she could think of was Reid.
She had to make that hideous monster let him go. She stabbed again
and again until, after what seemed to her an incredibly long time,
the hold of the tentacles slackened. One tentacle suddenly released
Reid to snake around Janina’s bare left wrist. Flaming agony shot
up her arm. She was now too close to the creature to use the spear
effectively, but with a wail of rage and pain she grasped it near
the sharp end and forced it upward into the gaping mouth.

The monster released Reid and an instant
later let Janina go, too.

“Push it back!” Reid shouted, trying to stand
up. “Push it into the sea.”

She pulled the spear out first, ignoring the
gushing black blood that turned the deck slippery. Then, forgetting
any danger to herself, she put both hands on the cold, scaly head
and pushed hard. The monster’s tentacles grabbed at her again
briefly, then loosened as it returned to the water.

Now Reid was at her side, looking over the
stern, but not at the creature sinking below the waves. He was
staring at the rudder.

“It’s badly damaged,” he said. Turning away,
he began to limp about the deck in obvious pain, flexing first one
leg, then the other, wincing as he did so. But in spite of the
discomfort he was clearly feeling, he continued his assessment of
what the sea monsters had done. “The dinghy is gone, too. The
creature must have smashed it to bits. It was certainly big enough
to destroy it easily.”

“Reid, if they come back,” Janina began. He
did not let her finish the thought.

“I don’t believe they will,” he told her,
pointing. “See there. I think the first creature must have gone
after the second one you wounded.”

A short distance away, the sea was a-churn
with two writhing bodies. The sea monsters were fighting each
other, and Janina could see it would be a duel to the death.

“We will have plenty of time to get away from
here before the winner of that battle can finish its meal,” Reid
said, his arm across her shoulders, holding her close for a moment
before he let her go so he could limp to the stern again for a
second inspection of the rudder.

“How can we sail if the rudder is damaged?”
Janina cried.

“We will just use what we have left,” he
replied. “Fortunately, the wind is rising. That will help to move
us away from this area even if we do nothing, and we can try to
steer with the sails.”

There was no time to tend to their injuries.
Reid rubbed his legs a few times, after which he seemed to forget
they pained him. Choosing to ignore her own sore arm, Janina jumped
to obey his commands. For all of that terrible day, she marveled at
his sailing skill as he fought to keep them afloat and on some kind
of steady course while the wind blasted at them, the sea rose in
gigantic swells, and the rain pounded down. The monsters
disappeared from sight and temporarily from Janina’s mind. There
were more urgent problems to confront. With the sky cloaked in
thick, dark clouds, they could not tell in which direction they
were being driven by the raging storm. They did not know whether
they might be blown toward the northern pole and dashed upon the
rocks at the cape they had just rounded, or tossed upon the
inhospitable nearby shore - or, worst of all, forced so far out to
sea that they might never find their way back.

The storm abated as night fell in a pall of
total darkness. There was no light anywhere, no sign of moons or
stars through the thick clouds still covering the sky. Reid refused
to allow a light on the boat for fear it would attract more sea
monsters.

They had little to eat, for, with the
exception of the flour and a small quantity of other food stored in
the drybox, everything on the boat was soaking wet. At least the
viscous black blood spewed by the sea monsters was long ago washed
away by the waves that had swept across the deck from side to side
during the worst of the storm. That was the only advantage Janina
could find to the beating they had taken from the elements.

“Reid,” she said after the sea had calmed a
little more, “go below and sleep. You are half dead from weariness
after the last three days. I’ll stand watch.” She did not add that
it would do no good, that neither of them could have seen anything
in the enveloping blackness. She could barely make out Reid’s form.
If the sea monsters attacked again, she and Reid would not know it
until too late.

“I’ll stay here with you,” Reid said. Knowing
how exhausted he must be, she gave him a none-too-gentle push
toward the hatchway.

“I’m not afraid any more,” she told him. “Go
below.”

She thought she saw him nod because a moment
later she heard him stumbling down the ladder in the dark. After he
had left her, she felt her way to the seat next to the tiller and
dropped onto it, rubbing her left wrist. The place where the sea
monster’s tentacle had wrapped around it ached with a fierce,
burning pain. She had been able to put it out of her mind while she
and Reid fought to keep the boat from capsizing in the storm, but
now that the immediate danger was over she could think of little
except her discomfort.