Beneath the Thirteen Moons Read online

  Korl stood, put his hands against his lower back and arched it, his eyes closed against the falling whiteness. Mahri groaned. He looked like some god accepting homage from the heavens.

  Quit trying to distract me, she thought.

  He looked down at her and grinned, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “If you chew anymore root you won’t make it to the village.”

  Conceited… “I didn’t know you cared,” she snapped.

  He came over and squatted down next to her. “You’re my only way out of this swamp—you bet I care.”

  Mahri refused to be caught in his gaze and instead watched Jaja pile up mounds of petals then gleefully dive into them. Of course he doesn’t care, she chastised herself. You kidnapped him, put his life in danger, forced him to do your will. Worse, an ignorant little water-rat had done it!

  Korl sighed and looked up over the bow. “Still, it’d be a shame if you didn’t see this.”

  Mahri stared down the smooth line of his throat, to where the top of his spider-silk shirt had been torn open. She wondered idly if the rest of his chest was also speckled with dark-gold hair.

  “Here, monk-fish,” he called, his chest rising and falling with each word. Mahri swallowed hard.

  Jaja managed to look indignant at the way he’d been summoned but hopped to the man’s side anyway. Her pet accepted a small piece of root and held it over Mahri’s mouth. She opened and wondered why Korl hadn’t just given it to her himself, until she saw him swallow. Hard. With a grin she accepted the piece of tuber, wrapping her tongue around it, closing her mouth ever so slowly. He reached out and traced the outline of her lips with a finger that trembled. Mahri grinned wider and crunched the root.

  He jerked back like he’d been struck, shook his head as if to clear it. Mahri tried to rise to her feet, accepted his hand when he offered it and stood close beside him, using his body to anchor herself. Their eyes met, almost on a level, and he looked away down the length of the channel. She followed his gaze, acutely aware of the heat of his body.

  She gasped and felt him grin in response. The lavender vines wove walls between the trees, a ceiling over the snaking passageway of the water. Those exploding buds grew tightly layered together and masses of white flowers flew from every direction. The farther they drifted down the channel, the thicker the cloud became. The stronger the perfume. Mahri filled her lungs and lifted her face, felt the barest breath of a touch from each downy-soft petal.

  “It’s beautiful,” she sighed.

  Korl’s voice sounded very close, compellingly deep with emotion. “Yes, beautiful,” he agreed. But when she turned to face him he wasn’t looking down the tunnel of white, but at her. “Beautiful,” he repeated, his voice gentled to a whisper but intense with desire.

  His hand rose, with aching slowness, and he brushed her wayward hair from her cheek, his fingertips burning like fire against her skin. Mahri reflexively turning her head into his palm, cradling it there with a silent moan. She watched him through her lashes, through the white down that fell between them.

  “I don’t even know you,” he said, his hand dropping to his side, the absence of his palm a cold ache on her skin.

  “Nor I you.” And Mahri dropped her staff, set her own palms on his shoulders, the muscles hard beneath the pads of her fingers. The silk of his shirt bunched, then dropped with a sigh as she slid her hands toward his neck, reached beneath that pale-gold hair, curled it around her fingers. So incredibly soft.

  His head lowered and her mouth rose to meet his of its own accord. “Yet,” he breathed, his lips so close she could feel their heat. “It feels like I’ve known you forever.”

  Mahri inhaled, pulled his breath deep into her own lungs, relished the thought of that mingling even as she closed the gap between them, met the firm softness of his mouth. Dry warmth, wet heat, she strove toward him, aware of nothing but this furious need to taste, touch, crush him to her.

  As if a rope had snapped she felt him move, his hands grip her lower back, pull her hard against him, smashing the falling petals between their joined bodies, releasing a fresh wave of perfume. Mahri ground her hips into his in response and he groaned, the sound rumbling through her own chest, making her smile beneath his mouth.

  She arched her back and he followed, lowered her to a bed of flowers, ground his own hardness against her. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and she stroked it with her own, fevered, hungry for all of him. When he ripped away from her lips and tasted the skin on her cheek, trailed the hot fire of his mouth to her ear, she tried to follow, grazing the side of his face. In the madness of her desire she plunged her tongue into his ear, felt him shudder and impale her in the same way.

  An inarticulate cry tore from her throat and he pulled back and stared at her. She could only pant as they gazed at one another, transfixed by the reflected mania of their desire.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, looking at her as if he could see into her very soul, search it for an answer.

  Mahri didn’t know what he meant, didn’t care. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, and ran her hands beneath the silk shirt across his back. Smooth hardness, coiled strength.

  “Ahh, but it does.” He smiled sadly, making the shallow dimple appear in his cheek. “Royals,” he recited, “do not consort with water-rats.”

  Consort? Thought Mahri. He sounded so ridiculously pompous. “Not even to tumble?” she invited, still in the grip of her fired senses, ignoring his ridiculous words for the hunger that still emanated from his face.

  His chin jut into air. “I do not ‘tumble.’” Korl sat back on his heels, shook the hair from his face. That mask of arrogant hauteur settled again over his features and he lectured her as if she were an ignorant child. “A Royal, especially a prince, has to keep the line pure. It’s our duty to strengthen the blood by producing children of master-level root tolerance.”

  Mahri sat up, slapping away the petals that covered her. “By-the-thirteen-moons who said anything about having kids?” Desire faded and was being replaced by fury. She just had to be physically drawn to an up-tight, morally-conscious… snob!

  “Are you denying it’s a possibility?”

  Mahri made a strangled noise. “I’ve got more,” she ground out, “root-tolerance in my little finger than all your simpering courtiers put together.”

  The man had the nerve to smile at her with feigned indulgence. “Aah, but you’re a Wilding, a freak of genetics that can’t be counted on to run true, like the original line of heredity.”

  Mahri shook her head. What had happened? One minute they were on their way to oblivion, and the next…

  “You take things entirely too seriously, Prince Korl.” And she made the word “prince” sound like a curse, and his handsome face fell into a frown. She paused a moment and thought, don’t be too hard on him, he’s only repeating what he’s been taught.

  “It’s just that a prince can’t waste himself on—” he began.

  This time she did curse, a vile word that made him blush clear up to his headband. “Don’t worry, oh-great-one, I barely sullied you!” she spat.

  He froze, the arrogant mask dropped for a moment and Korl regarded her with lustfully curious speculation. “Really?”

  Mahri choked, momentarily speechless, not knowing whether to laugh or scream. Then she stood utterly still, her mouth wide with horror. That he could make her forget all else…

  “We’re not moving,” she cried, scrambling to her feet. “Why aren’t we moving?”

  Mahri looked over the bow of her craft. The vines had spent most of their buds, only a few late-bloomers remained. And flowers now choked the channel, huge mounds of white petals that mired their boat and slowed the current to a crawl. She spun. Except for the depression where she and Korl had lain, the boat overflowed with the white mass, and she dropped to her knees, searching for her bone staff.

  “This is all your fault,” she scolded.

  “My fault?”

  “Ay
a. Why couldn’t you’ve been old and ugly?”

  Korl quit searching for the paddle and stared at her in astonishment. “But most apprentice’s are young.”

  “But you didn’t have to be so handsome,” she exclaimed, turning an accusing look on him. They both balanced on hands and knees, almost nose-to-nose. He didn’t even have the good grace to look flattered, and Mahri could’ve bitten her tongue. His smirk told her he knew he was good-looking, enjoyed the fact that she thought so too. She gritted her teeth against the fury that boiled inside of her. He was so arrogant.

  “And you,” he drawled, that deep voice pitched to send shivers up her spine, “didn’t have to be so provocatively… exotically… gorgeous.”

  Mahri reeled as if he’d slapped her. One minute he made her furious and the next he made her want to melt against him—and there he goes, she thought. He’s doing it again. Making her forget everything but his existence.

  “Jaja,” she called, her gaze still trapped in his. “Where are you?”

  A muffled squeak for an answer, and Korl’s eyes released her, turned to watch the monk-fish’s progression across the deck by the petals that puffed up from his movements. Another muffled, fairly disgusted squeak, and a brown ball of scales exploded from the whiteness, landing unerringly on Mahri’s shoulder. With an almost human display of dignity, he brushed off any remaining petals from his scales.

  Her hand touched bone and she pulled it from the fluff, stood and swung it with unnecessary force to beat the flowers out of her boat. Korl accomplished more with the paddle, and when the deck was relatively clear he looked up at her with a grin.

  “Now what?”

  Mahri opened her mouth to reply when something shook the boat, a tentative wiggle that didn’t come from any current. Korl’s grin faded and they both looked out across the expanse of white. Something fast, long—like a tentacle, yet not—speared through the water, snagged a mound of petals then disappeared with a quiet plop.

  Mahri Saw into the water, down past the upper roots of the sea trees, her Vision dull with lack of root but able to discern the huge shape that lay around and underneath them. Her craft wobbled again.

  “Do you See it?” she asked him, knowing that he’d taken more zabba than her, hoping her own Sight proved wrong.

  But he shook his head. “I can barely make out the water, much less See anything in it.” His brows drew together and he shrugged. “I don’t understand it, it’s like I’m in some kind of foreign land. I can’t See the Patterns clearly and when I do they won’t rearrange the way I want them to.”

  The boat rocked again, this time with enough force that they both squatted and grabbed a side of the hull.

  “You have to use their nature when you Push, not bend them to your will. The swamps are young and vital.” Mahri heard several “plops” around the boat. “It’s not like the tame city that you’re used to.”

  Korl flushed. “I didn’t think it’d be this different.”

  “And I don’t have time to give you lessons. Give me my pouch, Korl.”

  He shook his head, that golden hair catching the dying rays of the sun and throwing glints of light at her. “You can’t push your tolerance this far. The next piece of root may be your last.” He turned and began to paddle furiously. “Pole, water-rat!”

  Mahri flicked her wrist and the bone retracted. “I can’t pole, Korl. Don’t you get it? The water here is open straight down to the bottomless sea.” The boat suddenly shot straight up, plummeted so quickly she felt her stomach in her throat. “This creature’s huge, straight from the deep, come up for a snack of petals. The swamps don’t have all the thick, woven roots of the city trees. Sea beasts can break through them. Give me the pouch!”

  Her craft near tipped over.

  He quit paddling, turned to face her, his hand hovering near the pouch. Then his brows rose, his mouth dropped open, and Mahri felt a wet sticky rope wrap around her neck. Jaja lay trapped within that noose also, squashed against her ear, grunting with the effort of breathing. She tried to scream, only issued a strangled grunt before her feet left the deck, her bone staff falling from nerveless fingers. She hung in the air, her feet dangling a man’s height above the deck, scrabbled at the slimy thing that choked her but couldn’t break its hold.

  Korl lunged for her legs and she tried to kick him away. By-the-moons he’s doing it again, she thought. Reacting before thinking about the risk to himself. Korl caught her legs, tried to pull her down, nearly hanging her for good in the process. She held on to the sticky thing, her bones cracking from the weight of the man as the monster flung her higher, then pulled her down into the water with a loud splash.

  Prince Korl held onto her legs with stubborn strength.

  Mahri closed her lids on the swirl of white petals, used the Power to See instead. Not enough root, and she’d have to use most of it to hang onto consciousness for lack of air, but in her panic she Saw clearly their destination, the black mouth-slits that the beast stuffed the petals into. That they’d be stuffed into.

  It’s a tongue, she realized. That’s what’s wrapped around my neck and it’s bringing us to the beast’s mouths. She could See thousands of the slimy things, wiggling through the water’s Pattern. Think, think.

  The water roared past her ears.

  Tongues are sensitive, she thought. Well, at least human ones are, but Korl had her bone knife because he had her belt. And the surface of this thing felt tough as mosk-leather.

  Suddenly the drag stopped, her ears rang in the silence as the creature’s tongue hesitated for a moment.

  Perhaps he’s full, wondered Mahri with maniacal hope. The lack of oxygen’s making me giddy. And what’s that Royal doing anyway?

  He crept up her body, hugging her closely, never releasing more than one hand at a time from his hold on her. She’d be covered with finger-bruises.

  He locked his legs around her waist when he reached it, his hands finally letting go of that punishing grip. Mahri’s eyes flew open. Through the darkness she could make out the pale strands of his hair waving like grass in the wind, the fist of his hand around her knife as it plunged forward. The tongue jerked down again and Korl flew backward, his legs like a vise around her waist, holding on, then they were flung in the opposite direction and he slammed into her body.

  Mahri’s grip slackened. Too much, all this squeezing and pummeling. Her lids drifted down, she reached out almost lazily with the Power and the most amazing thing happened. She Touched the beast, not just the Pattern of its body but that of its mind. Like the native, she thought, in my dream. And maybe this is a dream, so why not let us go, sea beast? Dreams are too insubstantial to make a good dinner.

  And she drifted free, only the arms of Korl now held her, pushed her back to the surface of the water, dragged her into the boat and forced the water from her lungs. Mahri breathed in the perfume of bruised petals and wondered if she still dreamt.

  “Jaja?” she whispered from a throat too painful to be anything but reality. No chattering reply and she opened her lids to see Korl searching the boat.

  “Where?” he asked, then cursed one of Mahri’s favorite words and flinched in self-disgust. “You are a bad influence, water-rat.” He stood, swayed just a moment, and dove over the side of the boat.

  He took my pouch with him, thought Mahri, too tired to be angry, unaware that she’d even fallen asleep until the splash of rain in her face woke her up. How long had she been out? Moonlight glowed inside her empty boat and the feeling she had in her chest made her want to scream beneath the weight of it.

  “Korl!” Silence. She didn’t notice her tears that mingled with the rain. “Jaja!”

  A tiny squeak of acknowledgment. She let out a ragged breath, saw the fingers that clutched the edge of her craft and crawled over to where Korl’s body floated in the water, his pale hair haloed around his head. Jaja tried to squirm out of his arm but the man held him with the same frozen grip he had on the boat.

  “Prince Korl,
let Jaja go.” He didn’t answer her, seemed to be in some kind of stupor. How long had he been floating there, anyway? She tried to peel away his fingers, gave up and jumped into the water next to him. She could still hear the plops of those feeding tongues amid the patter of rain and hurriedly untied her belt from around Korl’s waist.

  Mahri had to swim to the other side of the boat so that it wouldn’t tip over when she climbed in, barely escaped another seeking tongue and swore under her breath. She opened the fish-scale pouch and selected a large piece of the zabba and eagerly chewed it, gagged, shuddered, amazed at how the Power now flew through her system.

  It seemed that the coma had changed her in more ways than one. Her pathways seemed enlarged, able to let greater Power flow through her. She could still remember the pain when she’d had her first bite of zabba, when the poison had forged the beginnings of small pathways to her brain. She’d thought she hadn’t the immunity to the poison, that she might die like so many others who’d tried the root. Instead, after that first initial agony, she’d felt the changes in her head, the chemical reaction that allowed her to really See the world around her.

  The overdose of root had felt the same. Only now her pathways had enlarged and Mahri Saw things that she didn’t know anyone was capable of Seeing. Like other minds.

  She repressed a shudder of terror for the unknown, and with the ease of long practice, banished the unwelcome speculations of her altered condition from her thoughts.

  Mahri tied the belt around her waist, more confident with its familiar weight around her, and retrieved her bone staff. Saw into the water, Pushed it under Korl and hauled him aboard. She managed to release Jaja from his clutches and between the two of them, dragged the prince into the narwhal tent. Then she carefully Saw into Korl.

  He’s only tired, she decided. And assured of his recovery she roiled the water and propelled her boat through the clogged channel, wondering about how much easier it seemed, the Power in her system barely tapped by the Seeing.