Free The River of Shadows by Robert V S Redick Page B

fury, intent on nothing but the death of everyone aboard.”
    “They took the food, though,” said Jalantri, frowning at the memory.
    “Why didn’t you return to the sea, once the sharks departed?” asked Pazel.
    “We could not,” said Vispek. “The Father tried to give us the power to change ourselves back and forth at will, but he never succeeded. Once we returned to human form, only the scepter in a Master’s hand could make us again into whales.”
    “And the scepter went down with the
Jistrolloq
?” said Hercól.
    “I told you that we came here with nothing,” said Cayer Vispek. “Our elder changed us a final time, even as the sea flooded the decks. That is the only reason we survived.”
    Neda glanced sidelong at the Tholjassan warrior.
What a sly one. He knows the Cayer avoided his question
. She busied herself with the gnawing of flesh from a bone, thinking how cautiously their leader was handling this moment, how attentive they would have to be to his signals.
Above all we must say nothing of Malabron
.
    Inside her the memory blazed, hideously clear. The collapsing hull, the grotesque speed of the inrushing sea, the old Cayerad bringing the scepter down against her chest and the instant agony of the transformation, no pain-trance to deaden it. Squeezing from the wreckage, the whirling disorientation before she spotted the glowing scepter again, in the aperture where the old man was working the change on a last
sfvantskor:
Malabron. She had watched his body swell like a blister. Confused and zealous Malabron; desperate, damned forevermore. He had believed in the utterances of mystics, believed they were nearing a time of cataclysm and the breaking of faiths. And with the enemy victorious and their mission a failure, Malabron the whale had done the unthinkable: bitten off the arm of the old Cayerad, swallowing it and the scepter whole, and vanishing into the sudden blackness of the sea.
    They had never seen him again, and Cayer Vispek had not speculated as to what had driven Malabron to such treason. Jalantri merely cursed his name. Neda, however, recalled his furious, quiet chatter, his ravings. In the last weeks they were almost continuous, in the hours when talking was allowed, and so much of it was outlandish nonsense that the others took no heed. But Neda heard it all, her manic memory sorting the drivel into categories and ranks. And in one category, by no means the largest, were his mutterings about “the path our fathers missed” and “those who fear to be purified.”
    Neda chewed savagely.
You should have spoken. You could have warned Cayer Vispek before it was too late
. For Malabron’s words had carried a sinister echo. They resembled the heresy once preached by the Shaggat Ness.
    She cringed, feigning some bone or gristle in her mouth.
I couldn’t do it. Not to any of them
. It had taken them five years to trust her, the foreign-born
sfvantskor
, almost a heresy in herself. Five years, and all the wrath and wisdom of the Father, takingher side. How could she have admitted that she did not trust them back—even just one of them? How could she have reported a brother?
    “Neda?”
    Pazel was staring at her.
Devils, I must take care with him!
For her birth-brother’s glance was piercing. Even now he could read her better than Vispek or Jalantri.
    She was struggling for calm. With an uncertain movement Pazel reached for her elbow.
    “Do not touch her,” said Cayer Vispek.
    Pazel jumped and shot him a look. “I was just—”
    “Coddling a
sfvantskor,
” said Jalantri, regarding Pazel with a mixture of amusement and contempt. “Now I see why the Father did not wish the two of you to meet, sister. He knew no good could come of it.”
    “Listen to me,” said Cayer Vispek to Pazel. “The one before you is no longer an Ormali, no longer Neda Pathkendle. I do not expect this to be easy for you to grasp, but know that every parent, brother or sister of a
sfvantskor
has faced the same kind