Kelcetrix prayed for his life. It was a hopeless effort; he knew that his pitiful pleas would not reach Kaer. Not through the ship’s dark hold, nor through the demonic storm under whose umbrage the ship surely traveled. Not above the groaning of wood, the churning of water. Certainly not through the cloth gag which beleaguered his throat, and chafed the corners of his mouth.

A thousand boards screeched and groaned as the vessel fought pathetically against its uncaring medium. The hold, cavernous dark, smelled of choked fungus and vermin. It rocked maniacally, and Kelcetrix found himself rolled into a corner, head smacking occasionally against a wall or obscured post. The rats, consequently, hadn’t started nibbling--though that was little consolation.

In their stead, Kelcetrix bit hungrily into himself, like a robin plucking subterranean grubs. He turned up fat worms of regret, wriggling obviously. His appetite was a well, deep with self-pity; his emotional liver swollen from the gorging.

They should have never split the party--an uncareful course of action which looked like the most cocky arrogance in hindsight. And it had been Kelcetrix’s own rude suggestion.

He ceaselessly recounted the days events, regrets swarming in overwhelming quantities. Would the animalistic Sprunishmen have fallen for such an obvious trap? Accepting the island natives’ hospitality had been an obvious enough choice for the noble afgal and the self-important monk. Assuming any ill-intent from their hosts would be an unthinkable insult--but not, Kelcetrix thought, for the bellicose Mierel of the Sote. Furthermore, he had a hard time imaging any group which incorporated those barbarians receiving an invitation to dine with the island’s aristocratic elite.

Then again, these were treacherous citizens. Rebels. Insurrectionists. Cosmic order, and all that. Kelcetrix was reminded, as often, of geese flying in formation…

But the Bluebird Republic had a navy, and Ellusen did not. Really, the situation was not so complicated. So why bother sending in champions?

On the other hand, why bother poisoning said champions? Why not just kill them? Why bind them? Gag them? Carry them over stormy waters?

Sacrifice, Kelcetrix realized. The Noriacs couldn’t hope to ransom these adventures--they couldn’t be so foolish. Wicked, yes. Myopic, possibly. But not stupid. Flush kings and princes, after all, seldom took up monster hunting in foreign lands.

So maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway. Maybe they were simply fated to be kidnapped, to be subject to these treasonous insulars’ weird rituals. But Kelcetrix was sufficiently deep into his sulk, and the bitter taste of his regrets proved as addictive as they were ultimately unsatisfying.

In his idealized reconstruction of the day, they were all sitting in the inn right now, swapping war stories, listening to Prince Ayricalt’s pipes, and drinking plum wine. Just like the night before.

It had been a bit base (Mierel had been, as in all his manners, a crude storyteller, such that the Tushikans had sometimes struggled to translate what he’d recounted--if they hadn’t outright refused). But it had been comfortable.

Kelcetrix did not grin, the fondness transferred all to sorrow. With an increasingly sore tongue, he pushed the wrapped towel of a gag away from the back of his throat. It was serving its namesake purpose admirably, and rubbing his lips raw--not to mention it was tickling his prodigious whiskers.

He should have seen it all coming, anyway. That was the real regret. He’d seen enough of the signs--even back in Syftulyk. Rather, he’d heard them (in head-quaking chorus), because all the hundreds of gulls which at any time polluted the Ellusenese harbor had been squawking about it: the so-called “domain of never-day:” in retrospect, an unusually dramatic kind of thing for birds as dull as seagulls to say. But many a novice sky-shepherd had put their faith in gulls, trying to divine truth from their idiot screeches. And the masters shook their sober heads. Kelcetrix would have never liked to count himself among the former.

He hadn’t been able to corroborate their story with the other seabirds, either (though he hadn’t really been trying). Instead, he had spent the majority of his lazy, Ellusenese afternoons at the rocky shorelines, learning the dialects of the skittering sandpipers. They told him enthusiastic, if essentially uninteresting, stories of their seasonal, southerly travels: they had come, perhaps, from as far as Iyisrinor (nothing like the grueling migration of geese, Kelcetrix had reflected, but he’d resisted the cruel urge to tell them). He enjoyed their happy conversations--even as insipid as they invariably were.

And what does that say about you, Kelcie?

A population of terns had scoured the shallows of the Ellusenese coast, but they’d apparently adopted some distrust of the red-eyed sky-shepherds. In fact, it had been their rudeness which eventually dissuaded Kelcetrix from continuing his shoreline espionage. And in all that time, the albatrosses and ospreys--flying high, out above the ocean depths--had evaded his interrogations. Or, rather, he had avoided making any effort to reach them.

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In the darkness, Kelcetrix could already see the masters’ old, bald heads nodding dejectedly. Beneath the roar of crashing waves and wooden torsion, he could hear their moans, drawing guilt from him to soothe their grief.

Well, he relented, that’s optimistic. More likely, the only faces he’d be seeing were those of whatever brute priests were readying to commend his soul to their strange gods.

But as doom pressed inevitably closer, Kelcetrix couldn’t help fearing each wrenching tug at the hull more than any unspecified fate which loomed just a bit further beyond. It was already dark enough--it took little imagination to feel the cold water closing around him, sloshed about in the turbulence. His gag soaked with saltwater, bound arms clenched uselessly behind him…

He wretched, pressed the gag hard with his tongue, and held it in clenched teeth. He fought with tearing eyes the dry taste of urging vomit.

Somewhere in the darkness, Arzado the ill-tempered, atheist monk and Oberoto, Afgal of Ponorit, vassal of the great Shu, must have been wrestling with the same grim fantasies. Luckily, they also had the good graces to do it in silence. They were, after all, great ones for silence. The afgal, with all that “words-are-soft-and-hard-bronze-speaks-the-truth” mentality which held the rugged lands of the Shu together. The monk, Kelcetrix suspected, suspended in that somnolent, rigid focus which he could apparently affect for hours on end.

Sophisticated company. Kelcetrix raised his head up, and banged it lightly against the floorboards. Kelcie, you moron. In a strange land, surrounded by villains, on a serious mission for a foreign queen, he had chosen sophisticated company.

He’d had sufficient time to wallow that, it occurred to him, the more immediate threat of sinking into the cold abyss had essentially dissipated. Indeed, the wrenching and cracking of the ship’s skeleton had all but abated. Locomotion smoothed to a relatively comfortable rocking. Of course, one pressing fear had simply been handed over for another, and suddenly the prospect of shipwreck seemed infinitely more desirable. That way, at least, his current possessors would suffer the same fate.

“I would not be born a king again,” said Oberoto, and Kelcetrix was instantly enraged. Too enraged, in fact, by the iniquity of it to be bothered by the groan-worthy piteousness of the statement.

He screamed. A muted grunt seeped out from the salivated cloth.

“I have failed my people. Treachery descended on us like starved eagles. We were slaves, chained by their gripping talons; but it was I whose guts they plucked, my living corpse has been their eternal carrion. And now, at last, I shall die, and the eagles will starve once again.”

Kelcetrix rolled his eyes--not least because of the disparaging aquiline metaphor.

“Self-pity does not suit you, your grace,” Arzado chimed in, politefully reproachful. Kelcetrix writhed, slamming his feet and skull against the floor like threshing flails. Howling mutely into his spit-swollen gag. “Quiet, bird-tongue!” snapped the monk. “You should behave yourself in the presence of royalty.”

“Hardly royalty,” Oberoto continued, his low drone sinking into a whisper. “When I was a boy, the Arasmala--the First Man--came north to negotiate a peace between the August Shu and the afgals of the Gothes. His train was a hundred miles long, and to accommodate his mobile court, a new palace was built just two valleys south of my grandfather’s domain in Ponorit.

“The project was truly magnificent, and attracted such wealth and prestige to my grandfather’s court that our blessings had never been more numerous; our sacrifices never better recompensed.

“I thought I had seen the Springs of Oledox, such did the blood pour from our temple. And the air, always perfumed with dark, roasting flesh…”

Kelcetrix felt his red eyes hotten, tears ineffectually blearing the utter darkness. He uttered a sob.

“It is good to think fondly of your home, Kaerisman,” said Oberoto rather sweetly, “but tears will gain you nothing.”

But tears came--indeed, like the very Springs of Oledox. The springs in which, of a pastoral youth, Kelcetrix had often cooled himself. Where he’d tormented the swathes of many-colored ducks with petty rumors. Where in the winters he would sit in the hot baths, chasing off monkeys to the odd, ruddy cardinal’s delight.

It felt so close. Funny, he thought--but he did not grin. Tears rolled uncoolingly against his temples. He’d faced death before--in the Gray Lands, where the wars never ended, and in Potther, where strange magic met the hard bronze of Litherian phalanxes. A sky shepherd always faced demise with the steadfast courage of a raptor, with a corvid’s fearless craft--and so he had. But he’d always had an arm left to fight with, or some slavering buzzard or crow to call on. Always a glimmer of hope, no matter how dim.

“Since then, the new palace has become a favorite of the Mighty Shu,” Oberoto continued, “and my own birthright has been integrated into his domain. I am a king without a kingdom--as useless as a severed head, and infinitely more vain.”

On that point, Kelcetrix could agree. It didn’t seem that the king (nor the monk, for that matter) would be of any help escaping this captivity.

Consigning his life--even as he struggled to swallow the saliva pooling beneath his gag--Kelcetrix felt a dreadful peace, an embrace from the darkness. He relaxed himself, his bald head smoothing, his fiery eyes dry.

He only hoped that birds would find his corpse, that he might not sink to an abyssal grave. That happens sometimes, doesn't it? A drowned corpse washing ashore?

And would he still be appetizing to the buzzards, and the eagles? Would they accept his flesh, gray and turgid, and ferry it back to the Sky Mother?

Kelcetrix prayed. He did not pray for his life, for that was already forfeit. No--Kelcetrix prayed for salvation.

A moment later, a great groaning of soggy wood broke the pacific calm, and dull light fell blindingly upon Kelcetrix’s eyes. He yelped reflexively and screeched into his muzzle, slamming his furrowed head against the floorboards.

He prayed for his life, once again.