The Key to Creation (10 page)

Saan was torn between his affection for the girl and the need to protect his ship, his crew, and his mission. “Whatever her magical abilities, I don’t doubt that Ystya will be a great help against other problems the
Al-Orizin
is sure to encounter.”

Fyiri remained adamant. “Knowing that she has such powers, Captain, we must make certain she does not fall prey to evil. That’s why she needs to be given the most careful instruction.”

Saan nodded and stood in front of the pale young woman, placing his hands on her shoulders. He glanced at the sikara. “You’re right, we wouldn’t want her to fall prey to evil. Ystya needs to be taught by someone we can trust.” Saan smiled and turned her toward the Saedran woman. “From now on, Sen Sherufa will continue her education.”

From the lookout nest, Yal Dolicar called, “Sea serpent, Captain! Off to port!” The sailors gathered to see the scaly shape atop the waves, but it did not rise up and attack them. In fact, it didn’t move at all.

Saan extended his spyglass and studied the silvery serpent drifting on the water. As waves lapped it, the body slowly rolled over like a log to display ivory-colored belly plates. The serpent was dead, its eyes glassy, its mouth open.

Curious, Saan ordered the
Al-Orizin
to sail closer. When they were near it, they could see that the monster’s carcass was covered with round welts. No one aboard had ever seen anything like it. From the deck high above, Grigovar glowered down at the floating serpent. Sen Sherufa was at a loss to explain the inflamed wounds. Sikara Fyiri muttered a prayer and made a warding gesture, though the men took little comfort from it.

Saan scanned the waters uneasily. “Keep a close watch.” The
Al-Orizin
continued across the open water.

Sitting on crates at the stern, Ystya listened as Sen Sherufa taught her about the geography of Uraba, sketching out maps of the Middlesea coast, the five soldanates, the Great Desert, and the recently discovered Nunghal lands beyond it.

When Saan approached them, Ystya glanced up, looking happy and engaged in the discussion. “I am learning about the world. It’s much larger than I thought.”

“Real cities are far more interesting than just dots on a map.” He took a seat beside her. “I’ll show it all to you when we get home. You should see the Olabar palace, and our harbor filled with hundreds of ships like this one.”

“Hundreds? And they all sail to different places?”

“There are sand coracles, too, in the south. Baskets borne aloft by giant balloons that fly back and forth across the desert each year.”

Ystya looked to Sen Sherufa to see if Saan was teasing her, but the Saedran nodded. “He’s telling the truth. And we’re discovering more places on this voyage.”

“I will show you everything,” Saan promised. “My father, Soldan-Shah Omra, commands all the soldans. He is rebuilding Ishalem, our holy city. My mother, his First Wife, will also tell you many stories. I have three sisters and two brothers—you’ll meet them, too.” He felt a pang of homesickness as he realized how long he had been gone. “I miss them all, but I’m partial to my little brother Omirr. He’ll be the next soldan-shah someday.”

Ystya stared out to sea, wearing a troubled expression. “I have brothers, too, though I’ve never met them: Joron, Aiden, and Urec. When I was a little girl on the island, my father told me about them, even showed me images. They went out to search for me.”

Saan brightened, hoping to ease the young woman’s sadness. “It’s a good thing they explored, since they found Tierra and Uraba. Urec planted golden ferns on his travels, because they reminded him of home. Do you think we’ll find golden ferns on Terravitae?”

“My father talked about them when I was very young.”

He stroked his chin. “In Olabar, it’s tradition for boys and girls to hunt the golden fern in the surrounding forests. It was one of my favorite holidays when I was younger. One year I went deep into the forest alone, and assassins chased me while I was hunting the fern.”

“Assassins?” Ystya blinked, again looked at Sen Sherufa for verification, who nodded. “But why would anyone want to kill you, Saan?”

Saan casually brushed aside her concerns. “Oh, I outwitted them easily enough by hiding deep inside a rotted log. When it was safe, I crawled out again…and there in the thick underbrush I discovered a single frond—a golden fern. It was supposed to bring luck to me, bless me in my life—and apparently it has.”

Ystya laughed, and he seized the opportunity to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, which made them both flush.

By afternoon, the sea around them was dotted with strange gelatinous shapes, like large floating bubbles. The forms had a grayish translucence, with the blurs of mysterious organs and tiny sparkling lights within. The crew first spotted one, then several, and finally the water was crowded with the silent creatures.

“It’s jellyfish!” Yal Dolicar said. “Jellyfish, each one the size of a fruit cart.”

Sen Sherufa peered down into the water at the beautiful, ethereal creatures. “Now we know what killed that sea serpent.”

A man bound to take ill-advised actions, Dolicar tossed a harpoon down at a giant jellyfish that brushed up against the hull. The spear burst the gelatinous hemisphere, and ooze splattered out as the jellyfish shriveled. Ichor splashed the
Al-Orizin
’s hull boards and left a dark and smoking stain that ate into the wood.

Reacting with alarm, Saan shouted, “Pour buckets of water down the side! Wash away that slime before it eats through the hull!”

As the men scurried to slosh off the acidic ooze, Saan gazed around them. The
Al-Orizin
cut through the water at a brisk pace, propelled by the breeze. As the jellyfish infestation grew thicker, he feared that if the bow crushed too many of the creatures, the corrosive body fluids might eat through the hull. “Trim the sails—we’d better move gently through this.”

The jellyfish made no aggressive moves, simply floated with the currents, drifted apart, then pulled together once more. Their body sacs seemed to store up sunlight during the day, and that night, as the ship sailed quietly onward, the swarm emitted a cold blue glow that lit the dark waters.

Ystya stood beside him, wearing a fascinated smile. Though the sailors remained uneasy, she seemed delighted with the phenomenon. “Another amazing thing you have shown me. Thank you, Saan—I don’t regret leaving my island to come with you.”

Even though Ystya didn’t seem at all nervous about the jellyfish, he put his arm around her. “We’ll be perfectly safe. Smooth sailing.”

The ship drifted along with the giant jellyfish for another full day without mishap. When the winds picked up and the water became choppier, the group of translucent creatures broke up and drifted apart.

As soon as Saan saw clear passage through the waters, he called, “Set all sails! Let’s get some distance from those things.”

The
Dyscovera

On the deserted island, Javian and Mia led Criston and Sen Aldo up to the headlands to see the monster they had found. An angry Prester Hannes took powerful strides with the group, like a general reconquering territory. “You would maroon us on an island infested with dangerous creatures, Captain?” His tone was accusing.

The sun hung low in the west and would set soon over the watery horizon, but they still had more than an hour of daylight remaining. The frightened mutineers kept an eye on the trees and underbrush, expecting predators to leap out at them.

“In the name of Aiden, Captain!” said Silam Henner. “If we are so close to Terravitae, give us another chance.”

Criston remained resolute. “I have already granted greater mercy than you deserve. And that’s
twice
for you, Mr. Henner.”

The prester snapped at his comrades, “Captain Vora may be the judge of our lives for now, but Ondun will be the judge of our souls…and his.”

“Up here, on this cliffside, right over the rise!” Javian called, running ahead. He and Mia trampled a path through waving grasses to the top of the hill overlooking the shore. Mia said, “It’s a ferocious-looking beast, but it’s been dead a long time.”

One of the headland bluffs had sloughed away to expose a sheer cliff of sand and chalk, weathered by rains and high crashing waves. The skeleton of an enormous creature was fossilized in the raw rock. Its bullet-shaped skull was as large as a whale and held a mouth full of fangs. Criston saw the bowed ribs of the conical body, the thin central bones from a tangle of loose tentacles, each tipped with a set of jaws and jagged teeth. A hollowed socket in the center of its head had once held a single eye.

The sight of the sea monster’s remains reawakened nightmares in his mind. Criston had watched a similar creature rise up out of a terrific storm. Those fanged tentacles had wrapped around the hull of the
Luminara
, broken her keel, torn away the masts. Jaws just like those had devoured Captain Shay and his shipmates, leaving only Criston and Prester Jerard alive in the wreckage.

“That is the Leviathan,” he said.

Sen Aldo was studying the creature, sketching it into memory. “It closely resembles the beast that Captain Vora drew in his sea-monster journal aboard the
Dyscovera
. But that attack took place only twenty years ago. This skeleton is much older—it must have been embedded in that cliff for centuries or more. This can’t possibly be the same monster.”

“Yet it must be, for Ondun created only one Leviathan.” Hannes’s voice was breathy with surprise. “When God saw how fearsome the monster was, He chose to not make a mate for it, lest they reproduce and devour all life in the oceans. There is only one Leviathan, and it is lonely and angry. That is why it attacks ships.”

“Well, it’s dead now,” Mia said.

Javian gave the prester a puzzled frown. “I thought the Leviathan lived forever, the horror of the seas. How could it die?”

Hannes glared at the white bones protruding from the cliff. “There cannot be more than one Leviathan, and the bones of the immortal Leviathan do not wash up on a shore to be buried in a cliffside. It cannot die.” He shook his head. “None of this is possible.”

“Nevertheless, that
is
the Leviathan,” Criston said.

Sen Aldo interjected, “Maybe some details of the Leviathan story are not accurate.”

Hannes looked angry enough to kill the chartsman right there. “The Book of Aiden is clear on the subject.”

“The evidence before your own eyes is also clear,” Aldo replied.

“I don’t want to stay on this island if there are monsters here,” mumbled Silam Henner.

“It’s a monster of the
sea
, fool,” one of the mutineers snapped. “We’ll be safer here than aboard the ship.”

Criston stared at the skeleton. The sinking of the
Luminara
was still vivid in his memory. Because of the Leviathan, he hadn’t been in Windcatch to protect Adrea from the Urecari raiders who took her.

However, the fossilized remains proved that the beast could be killed—and he wondered how many more of the monsters were out there in the seas. Maybe he would have a second chance against it. Even after so many years, his desire for revenge had not faded.

If not for the Leviathan’s attack, he could have had a different life, a happy life, a family. Ciarlo had told him that Adrea was pregnant at the time of the raid, and Criston could never be sure if his wife had lived long enough to give birth. If she’d had the baby, the child would be twenty years old now, a grown man or woman.

Oh yes, he looked forward to another opportunity to destroy the monster. He wanted a second chance for many things. The bones of the creature embedded in the cliffside symbolized the loss of those possibilities.

Hannes wrestled with the indisputable sight before him, trying to find an answer that fit with his inflexible beliefs. Watching the prester struggle with the irreconcilable, Criston could not forget that Hannes had turned part of the crew against their own captain. On the other hand, he could not forget how he himself had lived as a hermit for so many years, and how he had saved a starving and frostbitten Hannes. Wasn’t that a sure sign from Aiden? The experience of nursing the prester back to health and returning him to Calay had also wakened the lost soul, Criston, from his years of haunted isolation.

If his life had been different, if he had chosen a new path, if he had seized a second chance…

Turning away from the cliff, he spoke before he could change his mind. “Aiden advises that even the worst person can change, that a repentant man should be given a second chance.”

“Yes, and in doing so, the giver is also blessed,” Hannes said. “You know your Book of Aiden, Captain—but have you learned from it?”

Criston continued, “Rather than marooning you here, I will take you back aboard the
Dyscovera
. And when we reach the shores of Terravitae, I’ll let Holy Joron decide your fates.”

The mutineers caught their breath. “Yes, Captain! We promise to cause no trouble!”

“But first, you must swear your loyalty to me, all of you—on the Fishhook. When I give a command, you must obey it.”

Hannes held up the Fishhook that hung around his neck, and Criston did not doubt his sincerity. “My destiny is to travel to Terravitae, where I can gaze upon the face of Joron. Therefore, I swear to follow your orders, even when I disagree with them.” He wrapped his hands around the pendant and squeezed so tightly that his fingers bled. “I vow this to you, in the name of Aiden.”

The
Moray
, Middlesea Coast

His palms were rubbed raw, his blisters bled, and his weary muscles screamed with pain, but Ciarlo continued to pull the oar to the ponderous drumbeat of the oarmaster. The shaft had been polished smooth by the sweat of countless hands.

Though the morning sky was bright and the breezes brisk, the air belowdecks was nearly unbreathable. Porthole coverings had been knocked open, yet the crosswinds did little to cool the slaves chained shoulder to shoulder on their benches.