Michael Mathias - Kings, Queens, Heroes, and Fools

Hyden let his eyes trail behind them to where the Deck Master was pointing his looking glass. For a moment he saw a surging swell on the water behind, then it was gone. It came again, only closer this time. There was a single sharp spiked fin as big as a man’s leg breaking the water at the peak of the swell. Then it was gone again, back into the rolling sea. Then all of a sudden a fish the size of the Seawander herself leapt clear of the surface beside them. Its toothy mouth snapped shut on a pair of delfin as the terrified screeches of the rest of the pod caused Hyden to cringe and Talon to veer sharply away.

“Wow! It’s a sabersnout, Hyden,” Phen exclaimed loudly.

“Just so, lad!” Captain Trant boomed from somewhere. “Don’t fall over the rail now.”

Talon was so startled by the monstrous fish that he came swooping down out of the air onto the deck and landed badly among a roped down stack of water barrels.

The delfin were long gone when the sabersnout leapt through the air a second time. Its glossed black, dinner plate sized eye looked directly at Hyden Hawk. The satisfaction it felt after having just eaten a fresh meal was no less than the joy the delfin had been feeling when they were at play. If it could have, it would have eaten Hyden as it had the two unlucky delfin. Thus is nature, Hyden told himself as the big fish splashed gracefully into the rolling ocean and disappeared.

The Captain’s table was in the galley, and that evening they were invited to eat with the officers of the ship. The fare was quite a bit better than the promised sea biscuits and salted meat. It was actually fresh venison and honey pork with hard bread and seaweed casserole. The table was treated to hilarious entertainment courtesy of Babel, the Captain’s little blue-haired mango monkey. The monkey was the size of a newborn child and, as the first mate played a ditty on the flute, it whirled, tumbled, and spun across the table as gracefully as the ballerinas that sometimes danced in Queen Willa’s auditorium.

They tried to get Oarly out of bed to attend the dinner, but not even the lure of wine or stout ale would get the dwarf to leave his cabin.

After dinner, back in the Royal Compartment, Brady listened while Phen and Hyden took turns reading out of the Index of Sea Creatures. They spent a little time reading about delfin and the sabersnout, but curious as they were, they read on. They read about the cloud fish that squirted inky poisonous fluids into the water to stun its prey. They read about the ever hungry marsh threshers and the rare flying sea turtles whose bright turquoise shells were worth a small fortune in gold. They read into the evening until eventually all three of them were plagued with yawns. Finally, long after the moon had presented itself, they all fell asleep to the smooth rocking motion of the ship as it carved its way westward through the ocean.

Phen found himself at the ship’s rail before the sun was even up. He was heaving his supper to the fishes. Brady was right beside him. Oarly was sick as well, but had locked himself in the privy down in the Royal Compartments. Sick or not, the dwarf was determined to stay below deck the entire journey.

“It’s not right,” Phen whined. “I wasn’t sick yesterday.”

“Neither was I,” Brady said glumly, just before lurching another load of bile out into the sea.

“I don’t know where it’s all coming from,” rasped Brady when he was done. “I know I haven’t eaten that much.”

“Aye,” Phen agreed then started to heave.

“Here,” the first mate said, stepping out of the darkness. “Drink ye a few swigs of this, lads, and your guts’ll settle.”

Brady took the offered flask and was about to sip from it when the man cut in again sharply.

“Ah! Ah! Ah! Wipe you fargin mouth first,” the man all but shouted. “Do ya think I wanna taste your innards?” Even in the darkness, the gaps in his teeth were visible.

“Sorry,” Brady mumbled. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve then took a long pull from the flask. The burn of the liquor was harsh, especially in his throat. When it got down into his belly, though, the roiling there dispersed into a warm fuzzy pool. Phen took two quick swallows and nearly choked.

The next day, save for the crew, Hyden had the deck to himself. Oarly, Phen, and Brady were all below. Phen and Brady were sleeping soundly. Oarly was still locked in the privy, but snoring loudly between his less frequent rounds of dry heaving.

After conferring with Deck Master Biggs, Hyden scaled up the main mast’s maze of rope ladders, yardarms, and rigging, up to the crow’s nest at its top. From there he could see the horizon in all directions. There was no land in sight. It was a little unsettling, but not so much as when he looked down to see that the little ship below him wasn’t actually below him at all. It was off to the right at the moment, riding up the face of a swell. Ever so slowly it passed under him and he felt the crow’s nest swaying quickly out to the right of the ship as it eased down the other side of the wave. Not since he first started climbing the secret hawkling nesting cliffs to harvest their eggs with his clansmen had he felt such a tingling rush of vertigo.

No, that wasn’t true. When he’d ridden on the dragon’s back, he’d felt the same thrill, but that ride had been mostly at night. The feeling of desperation he felt during that flight had overshadowed everything. This was different. He decided he would have better odds calling the outcome of a coin flip than he would of landing on the deck if he fell. He knew he wouldn’t fall, though. He had been climbing all his life.

For a long while he spread his arms out like they were wings and focused his sight out ahead of their course. Only puffy white clouds, blue sky, and the slow rolling turquoise sea were in his field of vision. He imagined first that he was once again on the back of the dragon, but then that wasn’t enough. He imagined that he was the dragon, that he was gliding effortlessly over the sea, his big hind claws skimming the tops of the waves, and his wide leathery wings pushing volumes of cool salty air. In his mind he flicked his long sinuous tale this way and that to keep his balance true, then arced a swift banking turn one way, then the other.

Talon swooped in and landed at the basket’s edge. The bird had to keep his wings out to maintain his balance there but he did it gracefully.

Hyden smiled at his familiar as the dragon vision slipped away from him. He touched the dragon tear medallion that always hung under his shirt. If you ever have a need of me, just call me through the tear, and I will come, Claret had said to him. She’d also said: Remember who your true friends are. They come few and far between. He wondered if her remaining egg had hatched yet. It galled him that Shaella had tricked his brother into stealing the other two. Gerard had paid the price for his thievery-or was still paying it. Hyden shook off the thought and tried to get his mind back on pleasant things, but it wasn’t to be.

He didn’t quite understand what Shaella meant that night, in the middle of nowhere, just before he threw her off the dragon’s back. “You wouldn’t know what’s left of him,” she said. “He’s barely even human now.”

Claret had confirmed that Shaella’s words were true. The Westland wizard Pael had run a dagger through Gerard’s heart, but Gerard hadn’t died. The magic ring he’d found had kept him alive, but barely. Apparently he had crawled down into the darkness of the Nethers to escape Pael, or maybe to chase the power that the old crone had once foretold he would find down there.

Shaella said that he was barely human now, and Claret said that Gerard shouldn’t have survived, but he had, because of the ring-the ring that Hyden was supposed to be wearing.