Astonishingly, Paragon obeyed. He answered both his helm and the tug of the small boats as the men below rowed frantically to bring the ship about. The sluggish flow of the lagoon was with them, as was the prevailing wind. As Althea sprang to her own tasks, she prayed that Paragon would keep to the channel and take them safely down the narrow river. Like an opening blossom, their canvas bloomed in the night wind. They fled Divvytown.

Liveship Traders 3 - Ship of Destiny

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Serpent Ship

THE WHITE SERPENT FLUCTUATED BETWEEN SULLEN AND SARCASTIC WITH NO relief for anyone. He refused to give his name. Names, he said, no longer mattered to dying worms. When Tellur pressed him for a name to call him by, the white finally snapped, “Carrion. Carrion is the only name I need, and soon enough, it will be your name as well. We are dead creatures that move still, rotted flesh that has not yet been stilled. Call me Carrion, and I will call each of you Corpse.”

True to his word, that was how he referred to them. It was a constant irritant. Sessurea wished they had never encountered the creature, let alone wrung the story of She Who Remembers from him.

No one trusted him. He stole food from the jaws of those who had captured it. With a sudden bite or a slash of his tail, he would startle the other serpents into dropping prey, and then seize it for himself. He let fish-kill toxin dribble from his mane as he slept. It was even more annoying because he slept in the middle of the tangle. Maulkin gripped him as they slept, lest he try to escape in the night.

By day, they had to follow him. Again, he found every conceivable way to irritate the rest of the tangle. He either dawdled, pausing often to taste the current and wonder aloud if he knew where he was going, or he set a demanding pace and ignored all protests and requests for rest. Maulkin always shadowed him, but it took a toll on him.

Seldom a tide passed that Carrion did not provoke Maulkin to kill him. He struck insulting poses; he leaked venom constantly and showed no deference to Maulkin. If the decision had been Shreever’s, she would have throttled the white serpent days ago, but Maulkin held back the full force of his fury, even when the miserable creature taunted him and mocked his dream, though he lashed the water furiously and his golden false-eyes gleamed like the sun above the sea. He would not tempt the white with threats; the creature longed too strongly for his own death.

His cruelest torment was that he held back the memories that She Who Remembers had given him. When the tangle settled for the night, anchoring themselves together, they talked before they slept. Bits of memories from their dragon heritage were brought forth and shared. Often what one lacked, another supplied, and so their memories were knitted up like threadbare tapestries. Sometimes the mere naming of a name could bring forth a cascade of forgotten fragments from another serpent. But Carrion always held back, smirking knowingly as the others groped through their weary thoughts. Always, it seemed, he could have enlightened them if he chose to. For that, Shreever longed to kill him.

The talk that night had strayed to the lands of the far south. Some recalled a great dry place, void of any substantial game. “It took days to fly over it,” Tellur asserted. “And I seem to recall that when one settled, the sands were so hot that you could not stand upon it. You had to… to…”

“Burrow!” Another serpent broke in excitedly. “How I hated the grit under my claws and in the folds of my hide. But it was the only way. To land gently was wrong. You had to slide in, so that right away you broke the hot crust of the sand and found the cooler layer. Not that the cooler layer was much cooler!”

That sensory clue, grit in the fold of her skin, seized Shreever’s imagination. She not only felt the hot sand, but also tasted the peculiar bitterness of the region. She worked her jaws, recalling it. “Shut your nostrils against the dust!” she warned them triumphantly.

Another serpent trumpeted excitedly. “But it was worth it. Because once you flew beyond the reaches of the blue sand, there was… there was…”

Nothing. Shreever keenly recalled the anticipation. Once the sands changed from gold to blue, you were nearly there, and beyond the blue sand was something worth the long, foodless flight, something worth risking the dangers of sandstorms to reach. Why could they remember the heat and the irritation of grit, but not the goal of the flight?

“Wait! Wait!” the white exclaimed in sudden excitement. “I know what it was! Beyond the blue sand was, oh, it was so beautiful, so wonderful, so joyous a thing to find! It was-” He swiveled his head, his scarlet eyes swirling to be sure of every serpent’s attention. “Dung!” he declared happily. “Great mounds of fresh, brown stinking dung! And then we declared ourselves the Lords of the Four Realms. Lords of the Earth, the Sea, the Sky and the Dung! Oh, and how we wallowed in our greatness, celebrating all we had conquered and claimed! The memory stands so clear and shining! Tell me, Sessurea Corpse, does not this of all memories stand out most clearly, most-“