A King for Hothar

She knew her eyes were open, for she could feel the flutter of her lashes against her cheeks when she blinked. But, open or closed, it did not matter in the absolute blackness.

The sickening spin and tumble of movement had stopped, and Idasha was now only aware of a gentle rocking. She braced her hands against the strangely textured floor and sat up, promptly banging her already-reeling head against a beam.

She grumbled a curse and rubbed the sore spot. With no idea of what her surroundings were like, she couldn't tell which way was forward, which way was aft, or what other obstacles might crowd the interior of the underwater craft.

Idasha held her breath and listened, and did not hear the sound she most feared: dripping water heralding a leak or crack in the hull.

Good.

The craft had survived the descent, and so had she. That was something, at any rate.

But was it something to be thankful for? Would she sooner wish for a swifter death by drowning? She was adrift in the dark, with no way of knowing how deep beneath the surface she might be. It was entirely possible that she was trapped at the bottom of the Iceblown Sea.

She crawled the length of the craft, feeling her way. It seemed little more than a hollow tube, but at one end she reached a compartment with cabinets built into the walls. A bench was firmly affixed in the center, and in front of it her blindly questing hands found what felt like three pairs of reins tied to a smooth wooden wheel, and various levers of uncertain purpose.

That gave her her bearings. She was in the helmsman's place, and at least the craft was right side up.

Rising to her knees, she touched the ceiling. Not wood, here, but the cold stiff curve of sea-bear skin.

She returned to the cabinets, opening them one after another and trying to puzzle out by touch alone what the contents were.

Parchment ... maps and charts. A brush and a clay pot with stickiness near the lid ... glue or tar for sealing seams. A metal box ... tinderbox?

Idasha eagerly snatched it up. Yes, it was a tinderbox, containing not only flint and steel and tinder but also four stubby candles.

She took out what she needed and closed the box, making a small pile of tinder shavings on the metal lid. She struck the flint and steel together, startling herself with the bright flash of the spark. It flared and died, and she tried again.

The second spark landed squarely in the tinder and flickered into tiny short-lived flames. Idasha poked the candle's wick into them, and the flame steadied and grew stronger.

Her eyes, which had been aching from trying to see into the darkness, now ached from the searing fire of that single white-gold glow.

Light. Such a simple thing, such a vital thing. For a moment she only sat with the candle held between her palms, reveling in the light. Then she turned to examine what it revealed.

The helmsman's compartment was barely large enough for two people, with a second bench curved against the contour of the wall. The cabinets divulged more treasures -- a stout knife, a ball of twine, tinned fish, packets of flatbread, soap, a whistle made of bone, wooden cups, a charcoal marking-stick, a blanket, a pair of sheathed shortswords, a coil of rope. Hidden far in the back, behind a pile of rags, she even found a metal flask that sloshed when she shook it and smelled of strong brandy.

Finally, having fully explored the cabinets, she made herself see just how bad her situation was by bringing the candle close to the window-skins and peering out.

The light didn't reach far, but it showed her that the craft was floating only half-submerged on the inky surface of the water. But when she looked up, she saw nothing. No stars, no clouds, no pale band of the world-belt, nothing at all.

It had not been dark on the Iceblown Sea, not with the mountains of ice glimmering faintly white even in the dead of night or during a storm. And if she had been carried by some miracle to the river in the Narluk jungle that poor murdered Tunok had so anticipated, why was the air still so cold?

Idasha made her way to the center of the craft, the hollow open space beneath the top hatch. It was almost as empty as it had felt when she'd been crawling sightless through it, and much smaller than she thought it had been. Several casks were mounted along the walls, filled with fresh water. A dipper on a cord dangled beside each.

The floor was ribbed and ridged and coated in some sort of waterproof resin. Idasha remembered Felin telling her how the crews would harpoon seals and sea-bears. Here must be where they stored their catch.

At the rear was another compartment, this one closed off by a door. Idasha looked in, and understood she'd found the equivalent of the oarsman's galley. Four cranks jutted from the walls, each operating one of the paddle-wheels mounted on the outside of the craft.

This was not a promising development. Even if she was able to figure out how to pilot the vessel, she couldn't turn all four cranks at once. And even if she could do that, she couldn't steer at the same time.

Idasha said a few choice words she'd picked up from her brother Seric's best tracker, words that would have made most well-bred ladies swoon on the spot.

At the back of the galley was yet another door, which led to a small, cramped privy of indifferent cleanliness.

With no more of the craft left to explore, Idasha returned to the hatch and looked up. Coiled beside it and tied into place was a rope ladder. She lowered it, and climbed up.

The hatch opened easily enough, admitting a draft of dank, cold air that almost blew out her candle. She shielded it with her hand as she leaned against the edge of the opening, looking around in amazement.

It was a subterranean river.

The plinks of drips falling from the cavern ceiling were magnified and resonant over the gentle whisper of the current. Her light reached far enough to glisten on the damp stones of the cave walls. Snow-slush floated like curdled cream on the black water.

The river was moving slowly but inexorably, carrying her along. She strained to see ahead, searching for what disasters might be awaiting her. But while there were some fanglike spurs of rock protruding, the way directly in front of her seemed clear.

A ghost-white oval appeared at the fringes of the candlelight, near a dark, bobbing shape. The river carried her slowly but inexorably toward it, and she realized that whatever it was, it was pinned against the rocks.

As she closed with it, she suddenly saw that it was the body of a man, and that the hair wavering in ripples around his head was the deep russet of an autumn leaf.

"Felin," she whispered.

She'd been trying not to think of it, trying not to think of how he had been taken by Nerrar's treacherous magic and made to throw himself over the rail into the unforgiving sea. The whirlpool must have caught him as well, and washed him up like driftwood for her to find.

It almost seemed that he was moving, but she knew that was the current stirring his limbs. He was not truly waving his arm toward her in supplication. Only the senseless motion of the current.

But she couldn't leave him there.

Before the river could sweep her past him, she ran to fetch the coil of rope from the cabinet. She bound one end of it to the ring in the underside of the hatch, threw off her snowbeast-pelt cloak, and secured the other end around her waist. She tipped the candle, pouring a puddle of wax and then wedging the end into it as it solidified, holding the candle upright.

"You're insane for doing this," she said to herself, and the cave made her words, though softly spoken, reverberate like the voice of a spirit.

Insane or not, she gulped several breaths to expand her lungs, and plunged into the river.

Her garments of sealskin protected her from the worst of the cold, but they covered her only from neck to wrists and ankles. The fleece lining of her gloves, boots, and hood soaked up the freezing water, turning instantly into heavy sponges. The exposed skin of her face felt frost-flayed.

She swam to Felin, her limbs already going leaden and leached of their strength. He had been wedged into a cleft in the rocks, stuck fast, and her best efforts at pulling him loose proved futile.

The craft passed them, towing the rope. Idasha slung Felin's arm around her neck and held tight to him, pushing against the rocks with her feet as she felt the rope go taut.

It proved enough, and he floated free. She looped the rope around him and began drawing herself hand-over-hand. Somehow, finding a strength she hadn't known she possessed, she dragged his weight up to the hatch and lowered him through.

As she was climbing in after him, she kicked over the candle and extinguished it, casting her once more into total darkness. She closed the hatch and dropped to the floor.

The shivers struck her a moment later, clattering her teeth and making her fingers clumsy as she tried to unlace and remove her gloves, hood, and boots. She lost her balance, fell onto Felin, and gave up. Her head resting on the wet sealskin that covered his chest, she succumbed to despair and wept silent, scalding-hot tears.

But ... her heart, driven by her exertions and emotions, was drumming much faster than that ...

Idasha sat up with a gasp, tearing off her hood in such a violent motion that she yanked out many strands of her own hair. She pawed the sodden tresses aside and pressed her ear firmly to Felin's chest.

A slow, dragging, steady pulse thudded beneath her cheek. She felt the mildest of rising-and-falling sensation as shallow breaths slipped in and out of his lungs.

Her own miseries instantly forgotten, Idasha scurried on hands and knees through the pitch-black craft. She found the cabinets by memory and pawed through their contents, taking the knife, a handful of rags, and the tinderbox. She lit another candle, which showed her the terrible blue-tinged pallor of his face.

The laces of his clothes had swollen in the water, which would have made them a difficulty to untie even had her fingers been at their most dexterous. She cut the laces with the knife, divesting him of everything but his smallclothes. Despite the insulation of the sealskin garments, his flesh felt like a man-shaped block of ice. She scrubbed him with the rags, drying him and forcing feeling into his skin, and then moved him onto the folded blanket.

He began to shiver. Cold as she was, he was far colder.

Idasha stripped off her own clothes and lay atop him, her snowbeast-pelt cloak drawn over them both to preserve what little warmth they had. She covered her head with it to trap the heat of her breath as well.

Her exhaustion overwhelmed her, and she fell asleep listening to the strengthening rhythm of Felin's heart.

**

He struggled to wakefulness as if emerging from a pit in which he'd been buried alive, a pit of treacherous loose earth that kept giving way beneath his hands and spilling him back into the would-be grave.

His memory was an emptiness in which questions buzzed like wasps trapped within a jar. He shied away from full consciousness, impelled by a dread that he could not put into words. Something dire had happened to him, might still be happening, and it filled him with such a sense of revulsion, shame, and violation that he could not bear to face it.

A name came to him -- Felin Kathak -- and with it a rush of recollections, of self and identity. Yes, he was Felin Kathak, once called the Red Wolf. Son of Avar and Lydra, cousin to Davore ... and all of them dead.

Yet this was not the place of spirits. Surely in the place of spirits he would not be gradually becoming aware of a waning marrow-deep chill that had permeated him until his bones and very teeth ached. Or of a needling tingle in his face, hands, and feet. Or of the sensation of something warm and heavy draped across him, soft-yet-firm skin pressed against his own.

No, this could not be the place of the spirits. He lived. He lived ... and the weight atop him was a woman, her breath warm and humid on the side of his neck.

Had he been drinking? Was this Naralna, she of the sunset hair? But how? He'd refused her ... hadn't he? Unless she had, infuriated by that refusal, come to him as he slept ...

But it could not be Naralna, for he had left his uncle's lodge ... left with ...

Nerrar!

The dread struck him again with such force he nearly slid back into merciful insensibility, but he fought it. He would not run and hide from his own thoughts!

The prick of a sword-point beneath his chin roused Felin at once. In the moment before he recognized the man leaning over him, he imagined, chagrined, his father scolding him for trusting to rats and wolves to alert them to trouble instead of putting a man on watch.

He tensed to throw himself sideways from the berth and shout a warning, and then saw that it was Belorva holding the sword on him. The blade was red and dripping, the smell of blood hot and mortal.

Betrayal!

Idasha!

"Cry out, and I'll still your voice forever," Belorva hissed. The big man's face was wracked with guilty anguish, but it did not stop him from half-dragging Felin from his bed.

Felin clenched his jaw and kept quiet, searing Belorva with a furious glare of deadly promise. He let himself be led to the door, where Nerrar and his bestial followers waited. On the way, he spared an apprehensive glance at the other berths.

Idasha slumbered peacefully, cheek resting on folded hands. But Tunok, plodding good-hearted Tunok, was sprawled on drenched blankets, one hand clutching fitfully at the air. Even as Felin watched, that hand fell.

They went out onto the deck, stars and the world-belt shining overhead with frosty brilliance, the ice-mountains aglow with it. Felin knew by the sound of the water and the motion of the boat that they were near the Throat of Ice, nearer than they were supposed to be. He'd told the captain to steer clear of it until morning.

The night-watch sailors were crumpled by the helm, their heads twisted in unnatural poses. The wheel was unattended, the boat drifting where it would. Which was, thanks to the draw of the sea, toward the great whirlpool.

"For all your concern that I was leading you to your deaths," Felin whispered fiercely to Belorva, "you're hastening there yourself if you let us get too close to the Throat of Ice! It will tear the boat apart!"

"I have heard enough from you!" Belorva snarled.

"And you murdered Tunok!" Felin snarled back. "I don't know why you've turned against me, Belorva, but what has Tunok done to you? He was your brother-in-arms, your friend!"

"You don't know why? You drove us to it! Nerrar told me what you meant to do, take us to Westreach! And then what? Give ourselves over to their justice? No, Commander! I think not!"

Tunok would not have gone along with us, even with proof of your deception, Nerrar added sharply. In a more intense, private stab of thought, he said to Felin, And Belorva here is so much more easily swayed.

"Belorva, listen to me --" Felin began.

"I am done with that! Done with you! Nerrar is right ... you've been led astray by your fancy! But I haven't! We'll take her back, and tell the king how it was all your doing! He'll forgive us then, I know he will."

"Your father may have been Kathani, Belorva, but you don't know their ways. Even if the king lets you live, what would you do? They have no place for the crippled and infirm, they distrust magic ... how long do you think you and Nerrar would be allowed to stay? What sort of life do you think you would have?"

His words did not have the desired effect, Felin saw that right away. Belorva could not be swayed. He must had harbored secret ill-will toward Felin going as far back as the day Felin had first brought Idasha among them and refused to let her be treated as shared plunder, the day Belorva had been savaged by a ride-beast ... and healed by Nerrar!

But Belorva did, in sudden doubt, relax his grip enough for Felin to wrest free and disarm the larger man.

No! I'll not allow it! Nerrar's fury raked his mind, and the wolves and rats lunged to do his bidding.

He had no choice but to run Belorva through the ribcage before turning to deal with the wolves. As the first of them reached him, it leaped, and he thrust the sword out in front of him with both arms and all his strength. The tip impaled the wolf just below the breastbone.

A long wailing cry, made inhuman by the ravaged mess that was his mouth and throat, burst from Nerrar. Felin yanked the sword out in a sweeping slide that disemboweled the wolf, hoping that the impact of the shared pain would be enough to fell Nerrar.

His luck was not with him. Nerrar's glittering eyes fixed on him and a relentless razor-fist sheared through the tissues of his mind. He felt Nerrar's magic burrowing into him, forcing itself into him the way a man might force himself into an unwilling woman. It raped its way to the most integral Kathani core of his being, and seized control of him.

Felin could not break free, could not react, could do nothing. He was a helpless onlooker within himself, hideously cognizant of what was happening as his limbs were put into motion at Nerrar's bidding.

Jump, you lying cur! Nerrar commanded. You brought us to the Iceblown Sea, so let's see how well you swim in it! Jump, now!

Stiff-legged as a doll, he stalked to the rail and climbed onto it. The silver-streaked indigo water churned below.

He fought, he fought for all he was worth, soul battering against the confines of the prison of Nerrar's power, but it was unyielding as an iron wall. He inwardly shouted his denial and dismay as his enslaved body obeyed its new master.

As he fell, in the instant before he struck, he heard a voice -- her voice -- shriek his name.

The shock of the icy sea nearly stopped his heart. It slapped him back to his senses, breaking the evil spell. He burst to the surface, but the current had already swept him away from the boat and toward the eddying funnel of the whirlpool. It battled him as if it were a living thing, a living hungry thing meaning to devour him.

He caught a glimpse of Idasha, fighting off the second wolf, and then knew he was going under. He took the deepest possible breath, and dove down into the Throat of Ice, stroking as strongly as he could into the cyclonic blackness below.

And then ... nothing, until awakening to find himself here. Wherever here was.

He opened his eyes to the underside of a pelt. He found that his arms moved, sluggishly but well enough to let him paw the pelt away from his face.

The guttering flame of a candle melting in a puddle of its own wax shed a feeble illumination on the interior of an underwater craft.

Felin frowned in puzzlement. This was exactly where he'd wanted to be, but how on earth had he gotten here?

And who ...?

A startled, wildest-hope idea exploded in his mind. He knew he was a fool for letting himself entertain it even for a moment, bracing himself for the disappointment he was sure would follow as he pulled the pelt down further. Stifling a groan as his neck-bones creaked, he raised his head to look at her.

He dropped his head with a hard bump, staring wide-eyed at the curved roof.

It could not be Idasha! He was dreaming without sleeping, that had to be it! Or had breathed so much water that this was some dying illusion.

He looked again ... and there was no mistaking that fall of bronze hair, even when it was a tangled damp mass plastered to his shoulder. No mistaking that face, with its determined chin and insolent cheekbones.

"Idasha," he tried to say, but it came out as a strained croak.

His arms were able to move more readily now, and he brought them up to confirm with his hands what seemed impossible to believe.

Yet it was true ... Idasha, in nothing but a fine-embroidered linen kirtle, covering his body with her own. His almost entirely unclad body, he realized.

Had they ...?

No, he would not have forgotten that! And if he had, he would be sorely vexed!

Then what? How?

Somehow, extraordinary as it seemed, she must have come after him! In an underwater craft, and fished him from the river ...

He grinned ruefully to himself. She hadn't been overcome with passion and seduced him as he lay insensate ... more was the pity, though he would still have been vexed not to be alert for it ... but lent him her warmth to counteract the chill of the water.

She had saved him. Again.

Alone? Or was someone else even now piloting the craft?

Felin decided that it didn't matter. For the time being, he was alive and no longer cold, and in a close embrace with the woman he loved. Other matters -- hunger, thirst, danger -- would interfere all too soon anyway.

He curled one arm around her waist and with the other hand stroked the gentle curve of her spine. She stirred at his touch, mumbling sleepily.

"Thank you," he said.

"Welcome," she sighed. Then her eyes flew open. "Felin?"

"None other."

She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him breathless. "When I saw you fall, I thought you lost forever."

"If memory serves," he said, "I'm to punch you in the stomach now. As you did to me, when I took that liberty."

"I hope we don't plan to make a custom of fisticuffs after each kiss!"

"Am I to take it you anticipate more kissing?"

"I don't know what to anticipate, Felin Kathak, or what to expect."

"Wisdom dictates that you still not trust me, yet you save my life a second time."

She trailed her fingers down the side of his face and into his half-grown beard. "Love has little to do with wisdom."

He looked searchingly into her stormy-sea eyes. "Idasha ..."

"Don't speak, Felin. Not now. Not yet."

She lowered her lips to his again, and he knew that she was right. Though there was much he needed to ask, much they needed to discuss, the only thing that mattered right now was the warm reality of the woman in his arms.

**

"It is the Chilldark Way," Felin said, studying the helmsman's seat as if cudgeling his memory for lessons he'd been given long ago. "My family has known of it for years, but as you have seen, it is a dangerous and impractical way to travel. A small craft such as this can manage it, but -"

"But Kathani invaders trying to move an army would never be able to do it," Idasha said. "Why, then, hadn't they sent spies, assassins?"

Felin chuckled. "You've met my uncle the king. We're not a cunning and stealthy family as a rule. Assassination is seen as a cowardly Narluki practice, and as for spies, to what avail? All he'd wish to know would be where your forces were, and once he started marching in with his troops, your forces would come to meet him. Besides, the Chilldark Way cannot be traversed back to Kathan, and any Kathani spy would have as much trouble getting out of Westreach by the passes as getting in."

Idasha considered that, thinking back to her days - they seemed so long ago! - of sitting sentry above Deathstone Pass with old Cadmun. So much had happened since then that it might have been something she recalled from her childhood. To think that she was coming home to Westreach by this strangely circuitous route! With a Kathak, a vile and murderous Kathak, her captor-turned-lover!

"And it empties, this underground current, into Six Rivers Lake?"

"Perhaps it should have been named Seven Rivers."

"So near to the castle!" she marveled with some unease. "What then?"

He sighed and combed his fingers through his hair. "Then you are home, as promised, and I pray you'll find it in your heart to forgive the wrongs I've done you."

"I believe you now that you've sought to set them right. But what will you do?" She asked it with less nervousness than she felt, inwardly stricken.

"You've changed me, Idasha. Changed the very soul of me. I do not know what I'll do, where I'll go. Belorva and Nerrar may have been wrong about much, but they were right about one thing. There is no home for the likes of us now. Not in Kathan, not in Hothar, not anywhere. And so I shall surrender myself to your foster-brother the king, and accept what justice he metes out."

Felin lowered his head and shook it slightly, then returned his gaze to the swirl of black water visible through the dried membrane of the window.

The flow pulled them briskly along, and the subterranean passage had long since been worn smooth but for a few rocks and formations to the sides. As long as they kept the craft centered, they were in no danger.

"Gethin is a good and just man," Idasha said. "That you've helped me, and brought me home, means that he'll likely overlook stealing me in the first place. I'll see to it that he does!" she added with a flash of fire in her voice, the fire that Gethin had never been able to naysay when they were children.

"But he will be duty-bound to see me returned to Hothar, where my crimes are much greater," Felin replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "By my deeds, and by my very bloodline, my life is forfeit."

"Then you can't go!" she said sharply. "Men and their honor, I've said it before and no doubt will again, men and their absurd stifling honor! You do not have to go before Gethin, before Jherion, and calmly await their judgement! Go elsewhere! Begin anew! If being a Kathak is what condemns you, take a new name! But to walk in and bend your head to the blade?"

"That is honor."

"That is pack-beast droppings."

He grinned a little despite himself. "Pack-beast droppings?"

"And cowardice. Easier to let yourself fall down and die than to work, than to fight! Aren't you a fighter?"

"Such have I been since I was old enough to lift a weapon. But always with something to fight for. My king, my land, my revenge --"

"But not your own life's blood?"

"There must be something greater, Idasha, else it's all only the meaningless squabbling of dogs."

"You just mean you need an excuse."

"Oh? That we are all just dogs, we men, growling and snapping at each other but making grand causes of it to have it seem like something more?"

She braced her fists on her hips and thrust her chin at him. "As it happens, Felin Kathak, that's near exactly what I think."

His laugh was rueful, and the defeat evident in his slouched shoulders wrenched a knot in Idasha's heart. "You may be right. But suppose that I did as you would have me do? I'd be for the rest of my years looking behind me, waiting for my secret to be discovered. I could make no friends, have no family, for fear that when the truth came out, they would loathe me or be blamed for my deeds. I am quit of bringing pain to those I love."

"It would bring pain to me to see you die," she said, not softly but accusingly, lashing at him with the words.

"And would you be my something greater, Idasha?" He did say it softly, but with a tone as deep and cold as the water through which they floated. "Would you be my purpose, my reason to keep fighting? We both know that cannot be, and we both know why. You are the rightful queen of Hothar, and --"

"I've told you before, I'm not, I can't be!"

"You are. And I am the enemy, the outlaw. How could there be a future for us, when our paths lead in opposite directions?"

"I am not Hothar's queen." She bit off each word as if crunching through a crisp stalk. "I don't want to be!"

"Now who takes the easy way, the coward's way?"

She stared at him, fuming. "I thought you said there was precious little cunning in your family."

"I've picked some up, here and there."

It came to her, then and there, that if she did accept the fate that an accident of birth had outlined for her, she could decree him cleared of his crimes. Could save him from the execution that would otherwise be his.

The rest of her, every part of her that had ever been glad that she was only foster-sister to Gethin, princess in name alone and free from dynastic concerns, rebelled in stark horror against the very notion.

Queen? Spirits save her, it would be a thousand times worse than being a mere princess! Her every word, every act, scrutinized and on display for all of Hothar to gawk at! Never a moment's privacy! Servants and attendants, unobtrusive perhaps but she would know they were there! Guards and soldiers bound to protect her, to keep her safely out of harm's way, like a caged and delicate bird!

No more roaming the mountains! No more hunting except tamely in the royal preserves, in such a great noisy retinue that the only game around was that too docile and fat to get away! No more solitary swims, no more trousers, no more lovers, no more freedom!

She looked at Felin, sure that he knew what must be racing through her mind. But he was not watching her, concentrating instead on the river as the walls began to narrow and the current began to swiften.

"Something is out there," he said, low as if he thought he might be overheard.

"What? Where?" Idasha peered into nothing but darkness.

"The candle, blow out the candle."

She did, dropping them once more into the perfect black. At once the sounds seemed louder, their breath gusting, the slap of water on the hull booming hollowly.

"We're moving faster," she whispered. "What did you see?"

"I don't know. A shadow --"

"Against that? How can you tell?"

"And a glow, fleeting but there, a pale glow. Gone now."

"Our light, shining off a piece of ice."

He pointed, but needlessly, for it was the only thing in sight to draw her eye. And there it was, a glow, distant but distinct, and of such a shade of luminescent violet that she knew he was right. Not ice.

Then it was gone, swept ahead of them and down as the buffeting of the current grew stronger yet.

"The river," she said. "It descends again. We're going under."

Felin nodded grimly. "This is the tricky bit."

"There's always a tricky bit." She knelt and held on as the small craft dipped nose-first into the churning waves. Cold swallowed them again, and the blackness seemed eternal as death.

But then, far and faint, a different glow. Shimmery faint cerulean, brightening to a rich blue.

"We're coming up!" Idasha said. "The lake already!"

"No, it's too soon," Felin said. "We can't be there yet, despite how swift the river's been carrying us!"

"Then what is it?"

The blue light was above them, widening as they passed under the opening in the cave ceiling. Then they were in the midst of it, sweeping along under a glacial-blue cavern of ice lit from above by the sun.

A shadow passed over them, moving in a rippling band like a ribbon twisting in the wind. Idasha's breath caught in her throat and she heard a gasp from Felin.

It was bigger around than their craft and ten times as long, undulating with sinuous grace. At one end, where its length first narrowed, then widened into a rounded arrowhead, twin glints of violet glowed like amethysts filled with stars.

"What is it?" Felin's words were barely more than a puff of air.

"The Black Snake," murmured Idasha with dread-tinged reverence. "By all the spirits that ever were, it's the Black Snake of Westreach!"

As if it heard her, the serpent coiled and dove toward them.

Felin yanked at the helmsman's wheel and the reins that controlled it, but with no one in the rear to propel the craft, it only wallowed within the current's grasp. They glimpsed the Black Snake again, flashing past, and then it was beneath them and into the dark water where they could no longer see it.

The wake of its passage spun them in a roll. Felin had belted himself securely into the helmsman's seat, but Idasha lost her grip and tumbled to the roof of the craft. She felt the hard smooth curve of the window-membrane beneath her hands and though she knew full well how tough it was, could all too easily imagine it ripping in half, flooding them with icy water.

It did not give, and the craft continued its roll, slowing. Felin helped Idasha right herself, and pulled her onto his lap where his strong arms would suffice as a strap.

"I thought it was only a legend," he said.

Idasha trailed off, remembering the rest of the legend that every Westreacher child was taught in school, the legend that was recreated every year by actors. While sometimes the details differed, one thing was always constant. What the king had said, and how they were all to take it to heart as the first of his laws. The first law of the new land.

"It doesn't matter. Plainly, it is real enough."

"It does matter!"

"What matters is escaping it before it has us for supper."

The craft rose as if on a swell. Something large was coming up beneath them, coming fast.

"I can guess."

Rather than ram them and crack open the wooden craft like an eggshell, the Black Snake nudged them a glancing blow. The long body rasped over the hull with a sound like a finger drawn quickly over rough cloth, and then it snagged them with the coil of its tail.

It was dragging them, towing them straight up into the glacial blue light.

**

The newest catch didn't smell like food, didn't feel like food, didn't taste like food. But she knew there was something of food about it, and was in no state to be picky. Her young were ravenous, and if she couldn't provide, they would turn upon their siblings and then their own mother.

Most interestingly, she sensed that there was still something of live-food about this particular large morsel. Most of the ones she found that were this big were already dead, not that she or her young ever turned away a meal of carrion.

Fish and swim-food, fish and swim-food, that was their usual diet. This one was different, and in some dim corner of her brain, the serpent understood that it came from above, came from walk-food territory.

What little she knew about the above was stored in the recesses of her ancestral memories, knowledge gleaned by some long-ago foremother and passed down by the rite of the feasting.

One of her kind had braved the above, and devoured many walk-foods before being cut apart. The memories ceased at that point, dead flesh knowing nothing. But some of the meat and offal must have fallen back into the waters, there to be eaten by the rest, and the learning absorbed.

What she had seen with her bright violet eyes told her that there was walk-food held within the new thing. As if it was an egg, a concept she had no trouble comprehending.

An egg. Too tough for her teeth to crack, too large for her to stretch her jaws around. But when it hatched, small and tender prey would emerge and make a fine feasting for her young.

She flipped it up from the water with practiced skill. It landed in the pile of bones from previous meals, snapping many.

The noise attracted the attention of her young, and three small heads popped above the rim of the nest in quick succession. Their tongues shuttled curiously at the air, but found only their mother's own scent. Their eyes, a murky lilac, lacked the keenness of her sight.

The boldest of the three, a fine sturdy female who might one day challenge her mother and win, slithered down from the nest first. She twined along her mother's side, issuing soft endearing hisses in a ploy to be fed.

Another female and the smaller male followed their dominant sister. The male hung back, a crescent of tiny white scars on his black scales telling of a disagreement between siblings.

The mother shooed her young back to the nest with some scraps of fish left over from an earlier hunting expedition. The oldest female's hiss grew briefly louder and more threatening, but she subsided when her aggressiveness was rewarded by a choice sliver of blubbery swim-food meat held in her mother's jaws.

When the young had settled down as much as they ever did, the mother coiled herself around the nest and lowered her head to rest on her back. She let her eyes drift closed, their brilliant glow dimmed by the translucent lids. Thus, she gave the appearance of sleeping but was still watchful and alert.

The strange egg stayed where it was, rocking slightly as if the creature within was stirring. Its shell grated on the bed of bones, a layer so deep that the ones on the bottom, deposited there by ancestors pre-dating even the one that had ventured to the above, were ground to powder and packed into flat planes as hard as stone.

Overhead, the roof of the den rose in a roughly conical shape. At one time, or so the ancestral memories of the mother serpent told her, the hole at the top had been open to admit the golden light of the sun. But now it was clogged with a mass of solid ice that only let the weak blue reach down to warm the nest.

Of course, back then, there had been many of her kind. Colonies of them, nesting together on the sheltered rocks. And they had all been much smaller.

Times changed, things changed, and in the end it didn't matter much. What she knew would go to her young when she was too old to fend off their attacks, and in that way, all things were forever.

She mused on these things in her vague way, resting her body in the state of near-hibernation and listening to the rustles of her young as they tried to fit their growing bodies comfortably in the confines of the nest.

Eventually, the egg rocked again, and a round crack appeared in it. The tip of the mother serpent's tail twitched in interest, for she had never seen an egg come apart like that. A single round shard of it folded back, and the head of the creature inside slowly raised up.

It was not fumbling and helpless as a new-hatched thing should be. It moved with a wary agility, and something about its appearance struck her as oddly familiar.

She was on the verge of remembering when the second creature emerged from the opened egg. Two in one shell, both seemingly healthy, that was unusual!

They were the strangest-looking creatures she had ever seen. A male and a female by their scents, but pelted in the dead skins of one of the many kinds of swim-food.

As she was puzzling over this seeming impossibility, she heard a vicious hiss. Her head darted out too late to snare the tail of the boldest female, as the young serpent made for the strange creatures.

The male moved quickly, and with a sharp sound that made the mother's scales contract, he brought from somewhere a shining fang extending from his own limb.

Ancient memories flared within her mind and she knew what trouble she'd brought into her own den. But the young female, having not yet eaten and learned those memories, did not hesitate.

The mother serpent reared high, gaping her jaws as wide as they'd go without unhinging, and letting the full force of her violet eyes blaze down in her wrath. Her furious hiss sent the smaller two of her offspring burrowing under each other's coils at the bottom of the nest.

But it was too late for the boldest one. The male, daunted but determined, slashed at her with the long shining fang. The young one's body was as thick as his hindlimb, but his strength was such that he chopped her in two. The halves fell, convulsing, to the bone-strewn rocks. A flood of watery purple liquid gushed from the severed ends, filling the den with the scent of death.

**

When Felin killed the small one, his surge of triumph was dismayingly short-lived. The mother's head towered nearly to the ceiling, swaying near an icicle plugging a hole in the cave roof, an icicle with a base as wide as a man was tall.

They'd thought her sleeping, thought they might be able to carry or push the craft back into the water and make an escape, but that plan was out of the question now.

"We have to kill her!" Idasha shouted.

Felin barked a short, scoffing laugh. "With these?"

He held one shortsword and she the other, which she'd found in the cabinets inside the craft. While functional, they were pitiful weapons against something the size of the snake.

"The first king gutted one with a lhote!"

"Would that he were here!"

The serpent's head jabbed down like black lightning from on high. Felin and Idasha sprang apart, and the gnashing mouthful of pointed teeth - no tidy pair of fangs here; that was a mouth meant to reduce a whale to ground sausage in a chew or two - clamped onto a pile of picked bones. Ribs flew like jackstraws, spraying shards of bone.

"Once we kill it, we need to take the head and stomach!" he heard Idasha say from somewhere on the other side of a gruesome cairn.

"You're a bit ahead of things!"

The serpent had coiled back to ready a second strike. Felin would have sooner been back on the battlefield with Jherion's army thundering over the rise. Men, he could kill.

"I have an idea!" She dove and rolled over a cobblestone path of skulls as the snake struck again.

"Better yet, I have a plan," Felin announced. "Keep her busy!"

The look of astonishment she gave him was worth its weight in diamonds. See if chivalrous Alkath Halan ever treated her like that! Despite the circumstances, he almost laughed aloud as he ran to the craft and jumped back inside.

As he worked frantically, he watched Idasha through the window-membrane. She scrambled over the bones, sometimes only a few steps ahead as the increasingly maddened serpent lunged this way and that. Her shortsword could barely penetrate the sleek black scales, but soon purplish blood was trickling from a number of small wounds.

Felin cranked the lever into its last position. At the top of his lungs, he called, "Harpoon ready!"

She knew his intent, knew his need, in an instant. Forgetting her attacks, she ran straight at the craft as if trying to flee. The serpent, not to be denied her meal, plunged after.

"Now!" Idasha cried, flinging herself into a hollow.

"And away!" He threw the lever. The tight-wound spring released.

Even as he did it, he was suddenly, horribly sure that it was going to miss. But the serpent struck at Idasha with those tooth-ringed jaws wide open, and the heavy barbed harpoon shot into her dark gullet straight as an arrow in flight. So straight, in fact, that it tore through the roof of her mouth, out the back of her head, and kept going.

Gagging on her own blood, the serpent whipped about in death throes. A whip of her tail smashed through the nest and shattered it, crushing one of the surviving young instantly and throwing the other on a high arc that ended nearly at Idasha's feet. She made short work of it with her sword, barely taking her eyes off of the dying mother.

"Don't let her fall into the water!" Idasha said, as if either of them had any control over matters if the massive body did indeed writhe its way into the river.

But in the end, after one final spasm that clenched all the coils together tight as a fist, the giant serpent went limp.

Felin climbed out of the craft and embraced Idasha fervently. "We did it!"

Her laugh was savage and delighted. "The Black Snake of Westreach! Help me cut off her head, slit her open."

"Idasha, we don't need trophies. We know --"

"Not trophies, Felin."

As they stood with the dead serpent's blood coursing in purple streamlets to mix with the river, Idasha told him what that first king of Westreach had said all those years ago, and explained to him what she had in mind.

"Well?" she asked when she was done. "The easy way, the coward's way?"

"The honorable way," he said, and pulled her close to kiss her.