Kest had reached the forecastle where the captain and pilot were conferring, and as the warrior monk came near, he was shouting, “I can talk to it! I can take it! Let me talk to it!” He knew in a flash what the boy meant. Both of the Seafarers turned angry eyes to Gamarron as he came into the circle of their conversation, silently demanding that he remove this unruly child.
Instead, he faced the captain and said, “The Pacari might be right. I have seen him control many beasts at once. You’ve heard of Beast Riders. This one has exceptional gifts.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Kest shoot him a surprised look. He expected me to send him to his bunk like a little boy. Can he truly control one of the great serpents? “Unless your ship can live up to its name and outrun the thing, I think we ought to let him try.”
The pilot walked away with a muttered curse, and the captain clenched three fists in anger. “Serpentslip has earned her name four separate times, I’ll have you know, but the seas are exactly wrong for it today. Without a good wind or a storm to confuse the serpent we’ll never lose it.” He jabbed a finger at Kest. “Can you bond it, boy? Tell it true, now, or I’ll toss you in the monster’s mouth myself.”
Clutching his hurt arm close, Kest looked the man in the eye. “I can do it. Most animals just want food and peace.”
The bald man scoffed, the tattoos around his eyes making his frown a fearful thing. “Sea serpents never wanted peace that I heard of.” Conversation was becoming difficult as the watery screams grew in volume. If a tropical bird could have screeched as loud as thunder while a lion roared down a well at the same time, it might have sounded half as fearsome as the serpent’s cry. After a moment’s thought, the captain waved them forward to the prow. “Do it, then. We’ve only a few moments left, and we’re no worse off if you fail. Waters guide and shape you.”
Gamarron stood behind the young hunter at the bowsprit. “A sea serpent is not a majka,” he remarked, raising his voice to be heard. “They live for centuries and may well be as intelligent as us.” The boy ignored him and stood with his left hand stretched out over the water. His long queue hung perfectly down the center of his back, muscular frame stretching at the shoulders of the cheap shirt he wore. He runs to face the danger even though it is strange and the people are not his, the monk mused. Young and unwise he may be, but he has the makings of a good man in him. He desperately hoped the boy would succeed. Serpentslip was a good forty meters in length, but even a moderate-sized sea serpent might be twice that length and could crush the vessel in moments.
The Pacari boy clamped down on the port railing with his good hand, visibly putting effort into his attempt to reach the beast. He muttered to himself, shaking his head, but the serpentscream blotted out all sound. Gamarron consciously smoothed the tightness from his back and kept his limbs loose, ready to move in any direction. He felt tight as a drawn bow inside. The eerie screech reached a painful pitch, and many of the sailors put their hands over their ears.
And then suddenly there was silence.
In that stillness, Kest gave a tiny gasp and froze. The moment stretched out, crystalline and fragile. Then the great beast’s head crested the water right beside them. It was incredibly large. From horned crest to blunt snout was the length of four men. Each of its scales were larger than Gamarron’s torso, every one of them ridged and warped, fading from an iridescent white to a mottled scarlet at their tips. The massive head turned, and its eye drew level with Kest, wider than the boy was tall, a yellow-green whirlpool bisected by a vertical slit of deepest black. That eye looked, and it saw. It knew. Gamarron had never felt so dwarfed, and it was not the beast’s size that made it so – it was its intelligence. Her intelligence. He could not have said how he knew, but he was certain the beast was female. All of this the old monk perceived in an instant, and she wasn’t even looking at him. She was fixed on the Beast Rider. On the one that sought to bond her. The entire crew stood transfixed, horrified, waiting.
Kest could have reached out a hand and brushed her scales, but he stood ramrod straight, trembling with exertion. Not exertion, he realized as he watched the tempo and pulse of the boy’s shaking as it spread down his arms and shook at the base of his skull. Convulsions. He leaned ever so slightly to one side, trying not to draw the monster’s attention, and caught a glimpse of the boy’s face. Blood ran freely from his nose, and his eyes were rolled back in his head. Stars above, we’re all dead.
And then the serpent swung her great head as if shaking off fleas, knocking her snout against the bow, and they were both thrown to the deck. Up, up, up the beast reared, until her head was five house-heights above them, gouts of water streaming from her fringed jaw to splash down on them, and she opened her jaw wide and roared. The sound was so great that it blotted out Gamarron’s hearing and left his head ringing, but all he could see were the teeth – great pearlescent curved swords taller than himself lining a blood-red gullet and framing a black forked tongue. She had thrown off the boy’s pitiful lassos of will, and now
