The question of what to do with Kvelir was delayed. Driftbranch was sinking from the puncture caused by the traitor’s arrow, and the mad scramble to move supplies and people from the doomed vessel to The Wily Seal took precedence over all.
Kvelir was taken below by Dethur and Grokar as everyone else did their best to keep the boat steady beside Driftbranch, so that people could lower a plank between them. Swarms of thralls carrying crates rushed onto The Wily Seal as fast as they could.
Wes disrupted that flow by coming across the plank with a writhing, hissing bundle of orange fur in his skeletal arms.
Once his boots touched The Wily Seal, he hastily let the cat go and shook out his hands with a hiss.
There were new claw marks on his knucklebone.
Jaetheiri arched an eyebrow. “It seems that the cat managed to follow you onto two different boats, my prince.
Vezemar watched the cat run off thoughtfully. “That would explain why our boat never seems to have The Wily Seal’s rat problem.”
Yethyr would have preferred rats. “I told you that I wanted that hellspawn away from me.”
Wes looked at the Prince. Even without the eyeballs of a living man, you could almost see his pout. “I couldn’t let her drown.”
Yethyr thought that he very much could let her drown. He had half a mind to kick her overboard himself.
But the creature had scurried off and was nowhere to be found.
Yethyr sighed. He did not have time to think about the little orange demon that was stalking him for what he was sure were nefarious purposes. As soon as everyone was safely across, Yethyr commanded the thralls to set sail, not even waiting for Driftbranch to fully sink.
“I have reason to believe this lake is inhabited by monstrous hydromancers that sing deadly songs,” he told his hunters. “We need to leave this place behind as soon as possible.”
And so they plowed forward, everyone on the lookout for selkie seals. It was difficult to glance at anything, dangerous or otherwise. A thick gray fog hung over the lake, obscuring even the shore from view. The very air hummed with watersong and windsong twisting and weaving together in a haunting duet. I could not tell if selkie seals had made the fog's song this way or if it was the ambient natural hum of fog itself.
I wouldn’t know. I had never seen fog before.
There was something strange about the watersong churning in the current, carrying the boat forward, but I could not quite place what it was. It unsettled me, but I grew numb to the unusual sound after hours of hearing it.
The sun set, and still they sailed on Lake Huldrai with no end in sight.
Grokar and Dethur emerged from below deck. They had been interrogating Kvelir.
“Did you get him to tell you where this treasure of his is?”
“No.” Dethur frowned. “He believes it’s the only reason you're keeping him alive. He did say it was in a lockbox he could not open without the key that Tular had, which seemed to be the source of their forced alliance.
Yethyr felt the weight of the key in his hand. As his Death Circle killed both of the hunting parties fighting for it, by Brinn custom, the key and the treasure was his.
“We’ve ripped apart his cabin thrice now and cannot find any trace of any lockbox,” Grokar added. ‘He won’t break, and I roughed him up pretty good.”
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“Did you at least get him to tell you what the treasure is?”
Grokar blinked. “I did not think to ask.”
Yethyr did not understand that. He could not comprehend such an utter lack of curiosity. He had half a mind to march down there and question Kvelir himself, but he held himself back. He needed to sort out what his actual plan with Kvelir was. What he wanted was to throw him at the Datrean council and make him die doing something useful.
But he acknowledged that lugging an untrustworthy prisoner on the arduous journey into the Numa mountains was not practical. That aside, the rest of the hunters needed to see him deal with treason decisively. There could be no leniency.
But of course, there was the treasure, and that needed to be found.
Yethyr was still stewing on potential ways of getting Kvelir to disclose its location when the hunters began their nightly ritual of huddling around a lantern, pretending it was a campfire. They broke into what provisions they could find and talked over one another animatedly.
“I take one nap, and the Conquering Fang shows up? I wasn’t asleep that long.”
“We’ve managed to lose so many ships on this trip. It must be a record.”
“If Teshir and Shumari were hunting something stolen from them, was it proper to kill them as heretics?”
“I am fine. I am fine. Tular means nothing to me. He never did. He does not deserve to be spoken of at this firelight.”
“Let us hear a story!”
My very steel winced. I had been doing my best not to listen to the various stories the hunters regaled. They mostly had been about each hunter's personal exploits during the sack of Datrea, and there was only so much rage I could contain without breaking my silence and screaming.
Thankfully, tonight I would not be forced to hear the details of my people’s slaughter.
“We should hear an old story,” Vezemar said.
Nisari nodded vehemently. “I agree. If the Conquering Fang graced us with his mercy, then we must honor him.” She shook her waterskin. “This fire longs for the tale of Kenthano.”
Curiously, everyone huddled around the lantern turned to look at their prince. Yethyr was so wrapped up in calculating Kvelir-related logistics that it took a moment for him to notice.
“...what?”
“You are a son of Kenth, my prince. No doubt your account of Kenthano is nearest to the first telling.”
“Kenthano?” He had not really been following the conversation.
“It is the most appropriate considering today’s circumstances, don’t you agree?”
Yethyr frowned, but to my surprise, did not brush them off. In fact, a serious weight of responsibility seemed to fall over him.
“It would be a great honor,” Dath said eagerly. “To hear the royal account.”
The Prince thought of his father, and unlike the concoction of loyalty and lividness that the King usually invoked in Yethyr, what came to him then was a pure, precious feeling.
I was struck by the sensation, both pride and humility at once. Suddenly, he was the custodian of something important, something bigger than him.
He took a deep breath.
“Long ago, before Brinnyr united all under one hunt, before Nasset proclaimed the glory of Heaven, before even Tezemari caught the eye of Maethe, the kraken Tynis was killed by men.”
Everyone by the lantern leaned forward.
“Great men they were, all grey eyes and grave deeds. Upon the colossal floating carcass of that demon, they built their home. Twisting tentacles became spires pointing to the stars. Countless eyes became windows to the horizon. Who can say how long they ruled the sea from that dreaded rotting island?”
It was clear to me that Yethyr was telling it as his father once told him. There was something in his cadence that reminded me of the King.
“But for all their power, they had no holy hunt to unite them, no enemy to direct their might. They turned their viciousness inwards and fought among themselves. Their civil wars were bloody and unending, until Metino?, hydromancer princess of Tynis, sent the whole thing to the bottom of the sea.”
I marvelled at that. If watersingers could do such great feats of song, what a sight Flazea must have been before Datrea conquered it and selkie seals haunted it. Perhaps that spoke more to the power of Datrea.
It didn’t matter now.
“That was how Kenthano, Metino?’s younger brother, came to these shores. He and the surviving Tynese fled from the sea and came upon the Brinn, a union of hunting clans brought together by their shared devotion to Maethe and Heaven.”
In the lamplight, I saw Dath and Vezemar sit up straighter.
“Kenthano had not yet learned to fear the angel. His survivors swept over the ancestral lands like the tide from whence they came, making war on everyone they came across. The Brinn were a fearsome foe, all blue eyes and bold deeds, and yet—”
Suddenly, Yethyr’s story was drowned out by song. Watersong. Yethyr continued his story, and everyone listened without pause, ignorant of the cacophony that had suddenly erupted from beneath the water.
The selkie seals were calling.
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