124 The Al-Orizin

With cool spray blowing in their faces and hair whipping behind them, Saan slipped his arm around Ystya's waist and held her close. Neither he nor the young woman regretted what they had done. The Al-Orizin cut through the water, her sails full, continuing into the wide unknown.

Away from the strange island that had been her prison for most of her life, Ystya continued to marvel at everything she saw: the spray dancing from the bow of the ship, the far gray horizon, the fish that leaped from the waves. He found her innocent joy refreshing and hypnotic. “So much ocean! What lies beyond there?” She pointed off toward the eastern horizon. “And there?”

“Unexplored lands. You and I will see them together, for the first time.”

Since escaping from the isolated island, the young woman had remained fearful of Iyomelka, but Saan comforted her. “Your mother is far away, and we're safe from her.” To pass the time as they gained more and more distance, he told her stories of brave Uraban voyages—some of them true and some completely fictitious.

Sen Sherufa also took the young woman under her wing, teaching her things she needed to know. Ystya was eager to learn about Uraba, about history, about the places on Sherufa's Saedran charts. Sikara Fyiri insisted on teaching Ystya about Urec's Log, but the girl just laughed, which the priestess found maddening.

Staying on deck for most of the day, Ystya continued to glance behind them from time to time, but she saw only a line of scattered clouds far on the horizon. “My mother will be very angry, you know.” She looked at Saan. “She will try to capture us.”

He gave a loud and confident laugh. “Oh, Iyomelka can rant all she wants, but what can she do? She has no ship, and we have been sailing for many days. Besides, now she has the island all to herself—maybe that's what she wanted.”

“No, that is not what my mother wants.”

Each night, Sen Sherufa attempted to read the star patterns overhead, but though the chartsman diligently recorded all the new information, she could not reconcile the constellations in the sky with the star patterns she had been taught.

Far behind the Al-Orizin, day after day, the line of storms continued to dog the ship, slowly gaining ground. Grigovar muttered that it might be something the old witch had called up after all, but Saan refused to consider the possibility.

For his own part, Yal Dolicar didn't seem concerned. “It was well worth stopping at the island, Captain. We got a hold full of treasure, and you got yours!”

Sherufa bustled out onto the deck in the afternoon, as clouds thickened overhead. She held the sympathetic journal in her hand. “There's a new inscription from Olabar!”

Saan grimaced, already soured by the idea. “And what poison does Villiki spread now? I'm surprised she bothered to write back. Did she take our warning to heart?”

The Saedran woman opened the book and pointed to the last half page on which words were written. “Villiki is gone! Read this.” The script was different, carefully formed, the letters almost childlike.

Saan did not bother to hide his surprise. “It's from my mother—and Istala wrote it.” He drank in the report of Villiki's treachery, the death of the ur-sikara, and the overthrow of the corrupt elements in the church. Saan called out, “Grigovar—go fetch Sikara Fyiri. This is news she needs to hear.”

When the priestess emerged from her cabin, looking annoyed, Saan let her read the entry for herself; when she was finished, Fyiri pushed the book away. “I don't believe any of this. It must be a trick, some kind of lie. Anyone can write falsehoods.”

Saan goaded her. “Ah, as you did? I trust my mother's report more than anything Villiki wrote.”

Fyiri remained unrepentant. “If this is true, then a great crime has been committed against the church of Urec. The former soldan-shah and the corrupt First Wife will pay for this.”

Saan chuckled at the empty threat and pulled Ystya close to him again. “This is a very good day.”

The man in the lookout nest whistled and extended his hand toward the horizon. “Captain, something dead ahead—like a long black line, or a wall!” Saan shaded his eyes and gazed toward the horizon.

“Is it the edge of the world?” Ystya asked. “Are we about to sail off?”

Saan responded with a laugh that he hoped sounded reassuring. “That's just a silly story used to frighten children and superstitious sailors. It's probably the coast of Terravitae.” The dark barrier extended as far as he could see. He took out his spyglass and peered through the lens. The strange black obstruction looked like a low barrier across the horizon, lying dead ahead of them.

And it was moving.

“It seems to have… scales,” Saan said. ‘‘Giant scales.''

Ystya took the spyglass from him and stared through it, using her keen eyesight. She had been fascinated by the spyglass and its magnifying lenses. Now she stiffened, and her skin went pale. Her hands trembled as she handed him back the glass. “It's Bouras—the Father of all Sea Serpents.”

Fyiri insistently held out her hand, and after Saan let her use the instrument, her voice held genuine fear. “I think the girl is right—it's the snake that encircles the world from horizon to horizon.” For the first time, the sikara appeared to be terrified.

Saan held up the spyglass once more, and saw that the image did appear to be the body of an inconceivably huge serpent. Its great scales blurred as it moved along, endlessly circling. This was a far larger creature than any other ocean beast he had ever encountered.

The lookout called again, “Captain! The storms are closing in behind us—and I don't think that wall of clouds is natural.”

Saan turned the spyglass in the opposite direction to look at the localized knot of storms that defied the prevailing winds, cut across the currents, and headed straight toward the Al-Orizin. He adjusted the lens, scanned slowly across the froth of churned water, the sheets of rain. He saw a corona of lightning. Rapidly striking bolts danced across the water in a spectral illumination.

At the center of the storm rode a tattered dark ship that glided through the furious whitecaps like a sharp knife. The sails of the wreck were torn, her hull rotted, masts and yardarms splintered.

And at the prow stood a woman who seemed to be driving the fury of the ocean, riding the storms, creating the power with her anger. Iyomelka.

Feeling his chest grow cold, Saan held Ystya more tightly. He made up his mind.

If they had indeed found the enormous serpent girdling the world, he could not imagine how the Al-Orizin would ever get past it, but he would not go back to the wrath of Iyomelka.

“Hold your course,” he shouted. “Continue straight ahead.”