Phen

When they reached the boat, Phen could cry no more. Instead her body was racked by dry sobs of desolation. Seeing her son’s limp body slung over a pair of strange shoulders was enough to break her. What she did was for nothing. Phen gave up her life to save Mantos’s, and now he was dead, anyway. And I’ve lost Bandim, too.

Her feet were sliced to ribbons. Her legs were caked with mud. Her chest was tight. Her heart ached. My sons...

Yet as they clambered onto a disused pier, towards a boat creaking and bobbing on the dark water, there was a drop of hope. The female with the cracked first horn said she could save Mantos, that she might save Bandim, too. Phen had to trust her. She had to take the chance.

But there was still lingering doubt. The last time Phen had trusted someone strange, it came at the cost of her life. The temple novice hadn’t been a blue and purple stranger, but she was still strange, with her incantations and eyes that spoke of centuries.

As she followed, slipping on slimy boards that threatened to give way beneath her, Phen’s mind reeled. What if it was a trap? What if it was Bandim who awaited her, ready to slit her throat for her betrayal? Her hands trembled as she climbed into the rickety boat, but there was no one waiting in its dark embrace.

After laying Mantos along the length of the boat, the other female plucked up the oars. Phen fell to her knees, the craft bucking beneath her. She pulled her son’s head into her lap, winding her claws through his elaborate death braids. Strangely he wasn’t stiff, and the rot of death hadn’t permeated him. He felt cold, but soft, as if he was simply sleeping.

But he was dead. This was what Phen had tried to stop before. Now she had to try to save him again.

Sticking close to the shadows that clung to the coast, the strange female rowed off. Phen watched as the twinkling lights of the temple and palace dimmed. Then they rowed around a spur of land, and all that remained was rock and ruin.

Still stroking Mantos’s cold head with one hand, her other atop his twined claws, still bedecked with rings, Phen swallowed back tears. She stared at the female. Now there were time for questions and perhaps she would get an answer.

‘Who are you? What is your name?’

The female gave a rare smile. Her long arms pumped back and forth, a steady cadence that propelled them deeper into the darkness.

‘My name is Bomsoi,’ she said. ‘That is who I am. That is all I’ll ever be.’

Phen wound another of Mantos’s braids around her talons.

‘What does that mean?’ she asked.

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The reply came with a thin laugh.

‘Nothing,’ Bomsoi said. ‘Nothing and nothing.’

Phen’s tongue burned with questions, but she kept her mouth shut. Did she mean her name meant nothing, or did it mean ‘nothing’? There was little point in asking for an explanation. The female was skillful in her evasiveness. So instead, Phen turned her eyes to the stars.

Some winked at her. Most were still. More impressive than any of the diamonds that hung on the dark blanket were the moons: three huge pearls, overlapping.

‘The Lunar Awakening,’ she whispered. ‘By Nunako, I can’t believe I’ve lived to see it.’

Then the words swung back at her, a slap to the face. Tears budded again. She was alive and Mantos was not, she thought as she passed the back of her hand over her son’s cold cheek.

‘It is a time of great power,’ Bomsoi said. ‘It is a time that comes but once every thousand cycles. That is why I need you. That is why I need you now.’

Terror and fury swirling within her, Phen snapped.

‘Where are we going? Why do you need me?’

Not flinching at the rage, Bomsoi jerked her head over her shoulder.

‘We’re going there,’ she replied.

Before Phen could ask, she received the answer. Looming tall and proud above them, far enough from the shore that the darkness protected it, was a ship.

‘Who—?’

‘An old friend of Mantos’s,’ Bomsoi said, ‘and of mine. He will protect us.’

The sleek vessel was resplendent in cloth sails that rose like grey ghosts. Salt caught in Phen’s throat. By the goddess, she thought. I’ve never seen a ship so large. One detail was familiar, though: the elaborate carving of a two-headed serpent on the prow. The gods Ethay and Apago, the joining of good and evil. That combined with the beauty of the ship meant only one thing.

‘Althemerians!’

Bomsoi nodded as she brought them closer. The waves rippled and pulsed, as if the Althemerian ship was the ocean’s heart.

‘Yes,’ Bomsoi said. ‘Althemer is one of the few lands untouched by Masvam hands. Your son was—is—or will be again—close to Prince Fonbir.’

That name drew Phen back into her memories like a whiplash. Fonbir, Prince of the Island Queendom of Althemer.

‘The last time I saw Fonbir, he, was just a youngling, only a few cycles older than Mantos and Bandim.’

‘He is no youngling now,’ Bomsoi replied.

She set the oars back in their notches as ropes rained from the deck above. Securing them to the hoops stem and stern of the little rowboat, she placed two claws in her mouth and whistled loud and clear into the night.

With that, they rose from the water.

Phen clutched the sides of the boat. Her stomach lurched more than it had on the waves. She watched as the silver-edged darkness below drew away. Soon enough, they were hoisted to the deck. A figure waited for them. Phen squinted through the darkness.

‘Fonbir? Is...is that you?’

The young male cut a striking figure, gilded in the light of the moons. He stood with a straight back, short but commanding, with dark skin and armor black as night. He wore long embroidered robes, with a thick travelling cloak around his shoulders. Around his waist was a heavy chain, though he stood strong under its burden. His head fronds were red and clipped short. Like all high class and royal Althemerian males, he wore a veil over his face, just under the eyes to protect him from the vision of others. Most striking of all his features were those eyes. Phen had never seen anything like them. They were deep-set and entirely white apart from two pinprick pupils. The sight was exceptionally strange.

‘Empress?’ Fonbir asked, his voice low.

‘Not any more,’ Phen replied.

The prince clicked his talons and an attendant stepped forward to help Phen onto the deck. The stillness shattered when Bomsoi stepped onto the ship, cradling Mantos’s body. At the sight, Phen’s legs turned to water. Only the attendant’s grip stopped her from collapsing to the deck.

‘Please, help me bring back my son,’ she breathed.

Nodding, Fonbir turned his attention to Mantos’s prone form. Even in the darkness, pearls of tears glittered in his white eyes.