Into The Darkness

She could have gone, disobeying his commands, and he would have been able to do nothing about it. She never realized that. She was a well trained beast, raised from the time she was a calf to do as the small, weak creatures who rode her ordered.

Cornelu's greatest worry was not her going off in pursuit of mackerel but her diving deep after one. The spell would keep him breathing under water, but a leviathan could dive deeper than a man's body was designed for, and could rise from the depths so fast that the air in his blood would bubble. Leviathans were made for the sea in a whole host of ways men were not.

After a while, though, the mackerel thinned out, and Eforiel swam steadily on. Once, in the distance, Cornelu caught sight of a ship sliding along a ley line. He could not tell whether it came from Sibiu or Algarve.

In the waters where he was then, it might have belonged to either kingdom.

Whosever ship it was, no one aboard noticed him or Efori*el. The two of them did not disturb the ley lines in any way. Had the ancient

Kaunians thought of something like this, they might have done it, though they'd known nothing of eggs and lacked the sorcery to keep a man from drowning underwater.

Some few in Sibiu would sooner have joined with Algarve than with the Kaunian-descended kingdoms. Cornelu's snort sounded very much like Eforiel's. Some few in Sibiu were fools, as far as he was concerned.

A small kingdom joined a large one in much the same way as a leg of mutton joined a man dining off it. And after his repast, only the bones would be left.

No, Valmiera and Jelgava made better allies. If they sat down at the supper table with Sibiu, they thought of the island kingdom as a fellow guest, not as the main course. "If Sibiu sat off the Valmieran coast, things might be different," Cornelu told the leviathan. "But we don't. We are where we are, and we can't do anything about it."

Eforiel did not argue, a trait Cornelu wished were more common among the people with whom he dealt. He patted the leviathan's side in approval. And then, as if to prove him right even had Eforiel argued, he spied the southern coast of Algarve. He had to pause to get his bearings.

He and Eforiel had come a little too far to the east. The leviathan swam along the coast till in the distance Cornelu spotted the lighthouse outside Feltre harbor.

He let Eforiel rest then. Daylight was fading from the sky. He intended to enter the harbor at night, to make the leviathan as hard to see as he could. She would have to spout every now and then, of course, but in the darkness she would be easy to mistake for a porpoise or dolphin.

People had a way of seeing what they wanted to see, what they expected to see. Cornelu smiled. He intended to take full advantage of that.

No lamps began to glow as night fell over Feltre. The town got darker and darker along with the surrounding countryside. Cornelu's smile got broader. The locals were doing their best to protect Feltre against dragon [..r'ds f al rom..] Sibiu and Valmiera. What helped there, though, would hurt against attack from the sea.

When the night had grown dark enough to suit Cornelu, he took a glass-fronted mask from the pack he wore and slid it on to his face. Then he tapped Eforiel, urging her ahead into the harbor. The leviathan's [..tai~] pumped up and down, up and down, propelling her and the man who rode her forward.

Cornelu slid off her back and clung to the harness from beside her.

That way, he would be harder for the Algarvian patrol boats to notice.

He knew they had swift little vessels sliding along the ley lines in the sheltered water inside the harbor. Every kingdom protected its ports the same way.

But he had to stick his head out of the water to see where the most valuable targets were berthed, and also to make certain he did not attach an egg to a trading ship from Lagoas or Kuusamo. He wanted to grind his teeth at the arrogance the folk on the great island displayed, assuming no one would dare stop them from trading with Algarve for fear of bringing them into the war on King Mezentio's side. The trouble was, they were right.

He wished he could spot unquestioned naval vessels, but, save for the flitting patrol boats, he saw none. He did see three large freighters with the rakish lines the Algarvians so loved. They would do: not the haul he'd hoped for, but one that would hurt the enemy. He guided Eforiel up to within a couple of hundred yards of them, then gave her the signal that meant hold still. She lay in the water as if dead, the top of her head awash so she could breathe.

She would be vulnerable if the Algarvian patrol boats spotted her.

Cornelu's command would hold her in place while she should be fleeing.

He knew he had to work as fast as he could. Slipping under the water, he detached the four eggs his leviathan had brought to Feltre harbor and swam toward the merchant vessels.