Words of Radiance

“Hard,” Gu said, still paddling with his lethargic pace. “Patterns are off, these days. The gods do not walk where they always should. We shall find her. Yes, we shall.”

Rysn stifled a sigh and turned forward. With Vstim incapacitated again, she was in charge of leading the flotilla. She wished she knew where she was leading it—or even knew how to find their destination.

That was the trouble with islands that moved.

The boats glided past a shoal of branches breaking the sea’s surface. Encouraged by the wind, gentle waves lapped against the stiff branches, which reached out of the waters like the fingers of drowning men. The sea was deeper than the Purelake, with its bafflingly shallow waters. Those trees would be dozens of feet tall at the very least, with bark of stone. Gu called them i-nah, which apparently meant bad. They could slice up a boat’s hull.

Sometimes they’d pass branches hiding just beneath the glassy surface, almost invisible. She didn’t know how Gu knew to steer clear of them. In this, as in so much else, they just had to trust him. What would they do if he led them into an ambush out here on these silent waters? Suddenly, she felt very glad that Vstim had ordered their guards to monitor his fabrial that showed if people were drawing near. It—

Land.

Rysn stood up in the catamaran, making it rock precariously. There was something ahead, a distant dark line.

“Ah,” Gu said. “See? Soon.”

Rysn remained standing, waving for her parasol when a sprinkle of rain started to fall. The parasol barely helped, though it was waxed to double as an umbrella. In her excitement, she hardly gave it—or her increasingly frizzy hair—a thought. Finally.

The island was much bigger than she’d expected. She’d imagined it to be like a very large boat, not this towering rock formation jutting from the waters like a boulder in a field. It was different from other islands she’d seen; there didn’t seem to be any beach, and it wasn’t flat and low, but mountainous. Shouldn’t the sides and top have eroded over time?

“It’s so green,” Rysn said as they drew closer.

“The Tai-na is a good place to grow,” Gu said. “Good place to live. Except when it’s at war.”

“When two islands get too close,” Rysn said. She’d read of this in preparation, though there were not many scholars who cared enough about the Reshi to write of them. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these moving islands floated in the sea. The people on them lived simple lives, interpreting the movements of the islands as divine will.

“Not always,” Gu said, chuckling. “Sometimes close Tai-na is good. Sometimes bad.”

“What determines?” Rysn asked.

“Why, the Tai-na itself.”

“The island decides,” Rysn said flatly, humoring him. Primitives. What was her babsk expecting to gain by trading here? “How can an island—”

Then the island ahead of them moved.

Not in the drifting way she’d imagined. The island’s very shape changed, stones twisting and undulating, a huge section of rock rising in a motion that seemed lethargic until one appreciated the grand scale.

Rysn sat down with a plop, her eyes wide. The rock—the leg—lifted, streaming water like rainfall. It lurched forward, then crashed back down into the sea with incredible force.

The Tai-na, the gods of the Reshi Isles, were greatshells.

This was the largest beast she’d ever seen, or ever heard of. Big enough to make mythological monsters like the chasmfiends of distant Natanatan seem like pebbles in comparison!

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?” she demanded, looking back at the boat’s other two occupants. Surely Kylrm at least should have said something.

“Is better to see,” Gu said, paddling with his usual relaxed posture. She did not much care for his smirk.

“And take away that moment of discovery?” Kylrm said. “I remember when I first saw one move. It’s worth not spoiling. We never tell the new guards when they first come.”

Rysn contained her annoyance and looked back at the “island.” Curse those inaccurate accounts from her readings. Too much hearsay, not enough experience. She found it hard to believe that no one had ever recorded the truth. Likely, she simply had the wrong sources.

A falling haze of rain shrouded the enormous beast in mist and enigma. What did a thing so big eat? Did it notice the people living upon its back; did it care? Kelek… What was mating like for these monsters?

It had to be ancient. The boat drew into its shadow, and she could see the greenery growing across its stony skin. Shalebark mounds made vast fields of vibrant colors. Moss coated nearly everything. Vines and rockbuds wound around trunks of small trees that had gained a foothold in cracks between plates of the animal’s shell.