The Key to Creation (18 page)

As if Ondun Himself heard the unintended mockery in Huttan’s voice, a thrumming began in the spacious main chamber, a deep groan that emanated from the walls, the support pillars, and the dome overhead. Workers paused in their rushing about and began to mutter. A whisper of fear flew like a phantom around the chamber.

Two ceiling blocks dropped out of the dome and fell to the ground, shattering on the marble floors, wrecking the tiles and leaving widening cracks in the hemisphere above. Huttan looked up, furious at the damage. “Get crews up there and fix that gap right away! Now we need tilers to repair the floor.”

Instead of obeying him, though, the workers fled. The high scaffolding shuddered, and the soldan realized that the church walls and support pillars were shaking. He suddenly wondered if an earthquake was striking Ishalem, like the one that had recently destroyed Arikara.

The jagged cracks in the dome grew like living things. The nearest scaffolding toppled forward and collapsed. The harelipped young artist fell, screaming; he landed on his head on the hard tiles, and the scaffolding crashed down onto his body. More painters dropped like overripe fruit from above.

Huttan turned to flee. An archway collapsed and blocked the church doorway. In a shrill voice, the soldan cursed his inept workers.

 * * *  

Kel Unwar had just climbed to the top of one of the new watchtowers erected at regular intervals along the seven-mile canal. The waterway was a landmark of Uraban engineering ability and strength, but it also created a defensive vulnerability: yes, Uraban warships could sail from the Middlesea—but enemy vessels might attempt to fight their way through from the opposite side.

Kel Unwar had to prepare for every eventuality, though he felt soiled whenever he tried to think like the enemy. There was no end to the evil and treachery in the hearts of Aidenists.

These watchtowers were only the first step in the defenses. They would be manned by archers and equipped with small catapults to attack any encroaching ships, but even that did not satisfy him. Unwar had many innovative ideas about how to keep the canal safe.

From the watchtower platform, where sentries would be stationed at all hours, day and night, he gazed along the silvery channel. Merchant ships entered from the Middlesea and cruised past the beautiful buildings. The functioning canal was a marvel.

What caught his attention now, however, was Soldan Huttan’s church of Urec, in which the ur-sikara herself would soon preach. Unwar saw dust rising from it, saw the large walls
moving
. Tiny figures raced about like infuriated ants.

The dome fell inward. Minarets toppled like felled trees. Gouts of dust and smoke billowed up. Seconds later, an attenuated rumbling reached his ears, but he was much too far away to hear the screams as the entire church collapsed.

Calay, Main Aidenist Kirk

Mateo didn’t eat, didn’t even open his eyes. He knelt on the hard altar steps inside the main Aidenist kirk, praying and pondering long past the point at which his legs had turned as numb and dead as his heart. He refused to leave, wrapped in the dark blanket of his tragic private world. The Fishhook-tipped preaching staffs, the blue-and-green banners, the preserved ice-dragon horn etched with verses—nothing here gave him answers or hope.

But he stayed anyway.

He didn’t react when other mourners came to share the kirk with him. After a while, even the presters left him alone. He huddled there for two days, not even marking the passage of time. He would have stayed there forever.

Mateo refused to think about the future. He wanted a reason to accept what he was asked to endure. No one could have shown greater loyalty to Tierra or to Queen Anjine, no soldier had ever served the land better, and yet Vicka—his bright spot, his wife, his hope for a normal life—was gone. Not the victim of an enemy attack or treachery, but killed in a simple, senseless house fire.

She died saving me
, Ammur Sonnen had said, as if it were the most terrible confession he could make.

As the hours passed, and hunger, thirst, and weakness muddled his thoughts, he formulated the only conclusion that made sense. Vicka’s death must be more than an accident of fate, more than a vagary of adverse circumstances. No, it was his punishment. Mateo had done terrible things; he had meted out the queen’s justice, had overseen the slaughter of a thousand Urecari. That blood was on his hands. Even though Mateo had also done good for Tierra, Ondun had demanded Vicka’s life as recompense. He could not plead for things to change, could ask for no mercy—what mercy was there? Vicka was already dead.

After a while, he gave up praying and simply knelt on the stone steps. He kept his thoughts and his heart blessedly empty.

Then Queen Anjine came to him.

He smelled the scent—not quite a perfume—that he had always associated with her. He heard the rustle of skirts behind him, and her soft compassionate voice. “Mateo, I’ve been trying to find you for days. I am so sorry.”

He kept his eyes closed, sure that it was just a dream. In his disoriented state, he expected to hear
Vicka’s
voice, but it was Anjine, always Anjine. Right now he wasn’t sure he could even remember what his wife’s voice sounded like. Vicka seemed an unreal memory to him, a brief flash of happiness that was gone, drowned out by more vivid memories of war.

When he didn’t answer, Anjine knelt beside him on the altar steps where Prester-Marshall Rudio had given his sermons, where Mateo and Vicka had been united in marriage, linking fishhooks together as a symbol of their enduring bond…a bond that had ended in smoke and fire.

“I sent town guardsmen all over Calay to search for you. Ammur Sonnen is grieving, but he is also worried sick about you. So am I.”

Mateo kept his head bowed, his eyes shut. He was incapable of forming words, though he longed to let his sorrow pour out. It would be so simple, but he couldn’t allow himself that.

Anjine continued, close to him, her voice barely a whisper. “I finally came here because Guard-Marshall Vorannen got a message from one of the presters, and he thought the grieving man in the kirk might be you. I came right away.”

When he heard her, Mateo could think only of the sweet girl who had been his childhood friend forever. They were inseparable, Tycho and Tolli, Mateo and Anjine…without a care, blissfully ignorant of what the future might hold.

He felt the touch of her fingers like a gentle sparrow on his shoulder. Finally, he opened reddened eyes to see her, and caught his breath. Anjine looked like an angel that the presters might have described.

His voice was a faint rasp. “Vicka is dead.”

“I know—I’m so sorry. I wanted to be there for you, to tell you myself.” When she wrapped her arms around him, he tensed, struggling to bottle his sadness inside. She held him tighter. “You comforted me on the day that Tomas…” She swallowed her own words. “Let me do the same for you.”

Mateo felt weak. He shuddered and forced himself to stand, pulling out of her grip, but she stood too and grasped his hand. “You can’t go back to the Sonnen house—stay with me at the castle. I’ll have your rooms reopened. It’ll be like old times, happy times. You can finally feel at home, if not at peace.”

Mateo let her lead him out of the kirk. “I don’t have any other home.”

The
Al-Orizin

The sea monster attacked them in the mists of dawn. Gray-green tentacles rose out of the water, each one tapered to a barbed tip, like the stinger on a desert scorpion. Stubby brown suckers like flabby lips covered the pale undersides. The serpentine arms coiled and uncoiled in a menacing abomination reminiscent of the Unfurling Fern.

Sen Sherufa was the first to spot the creature as the sun shimmered through the morning fog. She had gone astern for quiet pondering while she munched on her hard breakfast biscuit, dipped in a bit of honey from a honeycomb she had hoarded throughout the journey.

The mass of tentacles twisted out of the calm water on both sides of the ship, questing for something. Sherufa yelled a warning, then dashed out of the way as a tentacle splintered the stern rail. A second one clasped a rigging rope tied to a stanchion and strained until the spar snapped in half; another slapped the deck, scattering the crew.

Ystya emerged from the cabin she shared with the Saedran woman. Her large eyes grew even rounder. “The Kraken! My mother summoned the
Kraken
!”

Saan called to her, “If your mother sent it, the monster will want to capture
you
, and I don’t intend to let it succeed.” Shouting for all crewmen to arm themselves, he picked up a harpoon himself. “Chartsman, get Ystya back in your cabin and bar the door so that she’s safe!”

Grigovar picked up a scimitar and with a bellow put himself between the tentacles and Sen Sherufa, slashing so that she could escape. He pricked the tough flesh with the point of his scimitar. At first the rubbery appendage recoiled as if it had been burned, then it lashed back with its stinger. Although the reef diver jumped out of the way, the suckered appendage dealt him a grazing blow that sent him sprawling. Grigovar got to his feet again, wheezing but ready to fight.

Saan was close enough to the side of the
Al-Orizin
that he could see a shapeless mass just below the water’s surface—the creature’s main body, like a pus-filled bag that sprouted a nest of thrashing appendages. A tentacle curled toward him, and Saan chopped off the curved barb tip with the harpoon blade. Greenish slime spurted out, and Saan rolled out of the way as the tentacle stump still tried to find him. He got up and threw his harpoon into the shapeless body sac in the water. The sharpened tip penetrated deep into the bloated mass, but did no obvious damage.

An appendage seized one crewman and flung him like a stone far out to sea. Another tentacle wrapped itself around a second sailor’s chest and lifted him up; though the man kicked, flailed, and stabbed with his dagger, the tentacle crushed his ribs and spine.

Sikara Fyiri charged out of her cabin, brandishing her staff and shouting defiant prayers. The Kraken released the crushed crewman, dropping his mangled body at her feet, dousing Fyiri with blood. The sucker-embossed arm smashed toward her, but she scrambled for shelter between two supply crates.

Yal Dolicar climbed out of a hatch from belowdecks, tugging on the leather laces that secured the artificial dagger hand to his wrist stump. “I’m ready to defend the ship, Captain Saan!” He slashed at the air with his dagger.

Grigovar crouched with his scimitar and gave the other man a snort. “With a puny blade like that? You’ll have to get close enough to make love to the Kraken!”

“Hah, I’ll kiss the thing with my steel.” Together, Dolicar and the reef diver battled the nearest tentacle, jabbing and slicing as it tried to grab them.

Another tentacle rose from the opposite side of the deck, and Dolicar spun just in time to see the lashing appendage. He thrust his dagger attachment toward it, but the narrow end of the tentacle wrapped around his wrist and yanked him into the air. He dangled by his arm, kicking his feet and yelling.

Grigovar slashed at the line of suckers with the scimitar, but the Kraken refused to release its grip on his friend.

As the tentacle lifted him higher, Dolicar plucked at the leather laces that held his artificial hand in place. When he undid the bindings, his wrist stump popped free of the knife attachment, and he tumbled to the deck, while the tentacle snapped back, suddenly released from the weight it carried. Dolicar landed, rolled, and sprang to his feet, staying close to the big reef diver. “Now we have much in common, Grigovar! We’ve both survived being captured by a sea monster.”

Grigovar wasn’t impressed. “I killed mine from the inside. You just dropped to the deck.”

Saan secured a second harpoon and went on the attack. The tentacles smashed another spar, and the hooked stinger-tip ripped a long gash through the silken sail.

From her cabin door, he heard Sen Sherufa’s voice yelling for Ystya, but the ivory-haired young woman sprang back out of her cabin. “Kraken, I am here! You’ve found me.” She ran to the port side, where the tentacles were writhing. “Though you were once an innocent beast, my mother has corrupted you.”

Ystya seemed unafraid of the tentacles in front of her. She held up her hands in a warding gesture, and once again Saan saw the building of cold, bright power within and around her. Ystya spread her fingers, and her skin gave off an unearthly shimmer. “Ondun created you, but now that can no longer be.”

She squeezed her hands into fists as if to concentrate her power. The tentacles towered over the fragile-looking girl, but did not move, as if the beast were intimidated by her. Ystya spoke with the force of an executioner’s blade. “I choose to
un
create you.”

The thick tentacles drooped and darkened with splotches of decay. The Kraken’s rubbery hide sloughed off into gobbets of rotting flesh, and the cartilaginous bones collapsed like a jumble of reeds. The shapeless sac beneath the water burst and spread a stain of foul-smelling entrails. Chunks of the rotted monster dropped onto the deck, while the rest simply oozed down the
Al-Orizin
’s hull boards.

The crew were struck to silence by the monster’s demise, as well as the strange power contained within the young woman. Ystya opened her clenched fists again. A moment later she reeled, disoriented and weak.

Saan ran to catch her before she could collapse. He hugged her close.

Sen Sherufa stared in amazement. Sikara Fyiri climbed out of her hiding place between the supply crates, and fear showed clearly on her face. Several sailors backed away from the girl.

Saan continued to hold Ystya, wanting to comfort her. He realized, though, that he needed some answers.

The
Dyscovera