*19*

"We’ll all die!" shouted priest Det-Bleen, the ship’s identifying bells and drums a peal of thunder beneath his words. Every day, he tried some variation on the same argument with Keenir.

"No doubt," said the captain, lowering his bulk onto his dayslab, angled above his worktable. His tail had grown enough to just touch the deck now. "Eventually."

"But this is madness," said Bleen. "Absolute madness. No ship has ever sailed this far past the Face of God. Soon the Face will set completely — then we really will be without God’s protection."

"How do you know that?"

Bleen’s mouth dropped open in surprise at the audacity of the question. After a moment, he spluttered, "Why, it is written!"

Keenir rearranged some sheets of leather on his worktable. "Young Afsan tells me that just because something is written doesn’t mean it’s so."

"Afsan? Who’s that?"

"The boy who led the killing of Kal-ta-goot. The apprentice astrologer."

"A boy? Who cares what a boy thinks? I am a priest; I carry the authority of Det-Yenalb."

"And Det-Yenalb told you we shouldn’t continue to the east?"

"No one told me that. I read it in the scriptures; you’d know it, too, if you’d read the holy words."

Keenir decided lying down wasn’t the right posture for this debate. Waiting for the ship now rolling on a wave to steady, he brought himself back to his feet and groped for his walking stick. "Oh, I know the holy words, Bleen. ’And the water of the River is like unto a path; yea, it is the path to God. But go ye not beyond God’s purview, for there lies only God knows what.’ Doesn’t say anything about danger; just that what’s there is unknown."

"The unknown is always to be feared."

"Well, why not ask your God?"

Bleen’s tail swished left and right. "What?"

"Ask your God. That’s Her, isn’t it? Mostly submerged below the horizon?" Keenir gestured at the aft bulkhead. "Go up on deck and ask for a sign that we should not continue."

"Surely the arrival of the sea-serpent was a sign. Two Quintaglios are dead because of it."

"But I’d encountered Kal-ta-goot once before, back on the other side of this line you draw, back when the Face of God was still rising in the sky. What was that monster a sign of then?"

"How should I know?" said Bleen.

"How should you know? Portents and omens are your stock-in-trade. How can the serpent be a warning not to enter these waters if when I first encountered it, when it did this" — Keenir gestured at his tail — "it was in waters you consider safe, waters your whole religion insists that we travel?"

"My God, Keenir? My religion? It’s your religion, too, I believe. Unless — you’re not a disciple of the Five Hunters, are you?"

"There’s much to admire in that ancient system."

"It was a false system, one that didn’t acknowledge the true God."

Keenir shook his head. "The Lubalite religion puts personal excellence foremost. Skill at the hunt, purging violence through killing one’s own food, the camaraderie of the pack. Even your religion makes much of that camaraderie. Isn’t it what we’re all waiting to get into heaven for? Well, the Lubalites had it every day, here in this life."

"How dare you compare the one true religion to that ancient cult!"

Keenir walked across the room, cane ticking. "I meant no disrespect."

Bleen shook his head. "This Afsan is a powerful force, it seems. I’ve never heard you talk like this before."

"We all change with the passing of the days."

Bleen narrowed his eyes, and sought some insight in the dark orbs of the captain. "But, Keenir, what if you’re wrong?"

"Then I’m wrong."

"And we’re dead."

"A ship is a dangerous place. I make life-and-death decisions every day."

"But never one so foolhardy as this."

They were interrupted by the clicking of claws against copper sheeting. "Permission to enter your territory?" asked a voice muffled by thick wood.

"Hahat dan," barked Keenir.

The door swung open and in came Nor-Gampar, commander of the current deck watch. He glanced nervously at the priest, then said to Keenir: "You wanted to be told … just before it was going to happen."

Keenir bowed in gratitude. "Come along, Bleen." The captain shouldered through the doorway, following Gampar up the ramp and onto the deck.

It was early night, the breeze cool and steady, the sky illuminated by six bright moons, ranging from thick crescents to almost full. Keenir looked to the rear, across the wide aft deck of the Dasheter. The trailing edge of the Face of God, an anilluminated dome, sat on the western horizon, far, far away.

Prince Dybo, Afsan, and several others were on deck, watching. Anticipation or apprehension was running high. Young Afsan’s claws were extending and retracting in spasms; Dybo’s were fully unsheathed on his left hand but somehow kept in check on his right.

Keenir looked at Bleen. The priest was tipped over from the waist, balancing his horizontally held torso with his stiff tail: the posture of penance, of one walking the replica River that bisected a Hall of Worship. Asking forgiveness already, Keenir thought. But then he looked more closely at Bleen, saw that his glistening dark orbs were reflecting the six moons oddly — ah, his eyes were tracking left and right, scanning the horizon, as if looking for the sign Keenir had suggested he seek, some proof that God really did disapprove of this journey.

But Bleen remained silent, presumably not finding what he wanted so desperately to see. Keenir turned back to the tiny remaining part of the Face of God, slipping slowly, ever so slowly, beneath the distant waves.

And at last it was gone. Keenir suspected that since the Face had been mostly unilluminated when it sank beneath the waves, the Godglow would not last long, and indeed it did not. After a short time there was no sign that the Face of God had ever been there.

Dasheter sailed on into the night.

*20*

Afsan and Dybo lay on their bellies on the deck on the Dasheter, their bodies warming under the tiny but oh-so-bright sun. The wooden planks rolled gently beneath them, but here, below the railings that ran around the edge of the deck, no breeze played over them. There was a body-length between them, that being as close as two males, even friends as good as the prince and the apprentice, could lie without getting on each other’s nerves if they hadn’t recently eaten.

"I understood chasing Kal-ta-goot," said Dybo. "Well, I sort of understood it — I don’t think I could ever get quite so obsessed about anything as Keenir did. But I don’t understand why we’re continuing to the east now that the serpent is dead."

Afsan, sleepy in the hot afternoon, was listening as much to the crashing of the waves and the barking of the sails as he was to his friend’s voice. "It will get us home faster," he said at last.

"That’s what Keenir claimed, too, when I asked him about it." Dybo yawned. "It still doesn’t make sense to me."

"It was my idea," Afsan said. "The world is round."

"Suck eggs," said Dybo.

"No, it really is."

Dybo’s dark eyes rolled. "You’re getting too much sun."

Afsan clicked his teeth. "No, I’m not. The whole world is a ball, a sphere."

Dybo’s tail, sticking up like a rubbery mast, bounced with glee. "A ball? Be serious."

"I am serious. I’m convinced of it, and Keenir is convinced of it now, too."

"What makes you think the world is round?"

"The things I’ve seen on this voyage, both with my own eyes and through the far-seer."

"And what have you seen?"

"The moons are worlds, too — with mountains and valleys. The planets are more than just points of light in the night sky. They, too, are spheres, and at least some of them go through phases just as the moons do. Some of the planets are accompanied by their own moons. The Face of God is a sphere, and it does not glow on its own but shines by reflected light from the sun."