The Power and the Glory

Book 1 Chapter X: Miscalculation

The sweet little lies you tell won't erase the blood on your teeth. -- Unknown

Far away from Saoridhlém, Kitritúr awoke from her uneasy sleep in a cold sweat. "That idiot Abi is doing something stupid again. I just know it."

It wasn't quite as much of a leap of logic as it sounded. Ever since the incident of the walking dead Kitri's nightmares had been haunted by reanimated corpses. Not the brainless, harmless ones Abi had actually reanimated, but vicious, deadly creatures that relentlessly hunted the living. Night after night she started awake with a stifled scream, feeling the phantom pain of imaginary teeth tearing through her throat, her hand flying to her neck to make sure the teeth were just imaginary after all. After so many nights of endless panic she was not feeling at all kindly-disposed towards Abi. So when she woke again, this time with the certainty that something was going horribly wrong somewhere, she knew exactly who to blame it on.

Kitri got up, her mouth set in a grim line. It was useless trying to go back to sleep now. She wouldn't get a minute's peace until she was sure her imbecile of a friend wasn't about to start a galaxy-wide zombie apocalypse.

She went into her study and began to draw up plans for an unexpected trip to Saoridhlém. She didn't know how long she'd be away. Probably at least until after the Day of Comets -- which would provide a convenient excuse for her hasty departure. Everyone knew she was originally from Saoridhlém and most of her immediate family still lived there. All she had to do was temporarily hand the ruling of her lands over to her steward, pack enough clothes to last her a month or longer, and buy tickets on the earliest spaceship to Saoridhlém. With any luck she'd be on her way by tomorrow morning at the latest.

Abihira won't know what hit her, Kitri thought with grim satisfaction as she made a list of important duties. I'll stop her raising the dead again, even if I have to go to the empress herself!

~~~~

From the perspective of someone on a boat the sea between Seroyawa and Saoridhlém was almost a thousand miles of vast emptiness. There were small islands in between them, of course; parts of the Ikinasan archipelago. If you didn't want to make the whole journey in one go (and who would, when the seas were rumoured to be full of strange creatures?) then you could veer south. That way you could make a quick stop in the kingdom of Hyon-eun before heading north-east again to Seroyawa -- as long as you kept in mind the often very strained relationship between Hyon-eun and Seroyawa. But the unfortunate fact remained. Unless you went in an airship, or took a complicated route by land through Kazincgy, Nabevsky, Lagoeuli, Liang and Western Qi, you faced miles and miles of open ocean.

Tales abounded of the things seen in the oceans. Tales of enormous octopuses, of islands that weren't islands, of sea serpents and kraken and other, even stranger things. Most people who made the journey saw nothing at all, and thought the people who told the stories were drunken fools. Yet still the whispers lingered.

Unusual sightings around the coast of Liang were much rarer. The crew of the Meijung had certainly never seen anything to alarm them before. When they cast their fishing nets one day they expected to catch guoma[1] and nothing else.

The first sign something was wrong came when the fishing boat abruptly lurched to the side, as if something had grabbed her and was pulling her behind it. Startled exclamations and angry oaths rang out. Everyone peered over the boat's sides to see what had happened.

The sea bubbled and roiled like boiling water around their fishing nets. Something very large coiled and thrashed just far enough below the surface that they couldn't see what it was. A silence equal parts amazed and horrified fell on the fishermen.