failing to convince to make this very trip.
In fact, he pretty much looked out of place away from water. That drew
Solum'ke's attention, and she immediately became more interested in K'zk's
diatribe than in my soft-spoken words of adoration and the grilled lemock
haunch sizzling on her plate.
Qwohogs are bipedal amphibians. This one was pale green, almost matching
the restaurant's drapes. He had silvery-blue scales atop his head, pointed
ears, and long, thin fingers that he waved every time he uttered a word. His
speech was funny and clipped, made harsh and nasally by the vocalizer mask he
wore. I'd learned that Qwohogs normally communicate by sending vibrations
through the water - comfreshwater-and need a mask to be understood above the
waves. Saltwater isn't their preferred environment, but apparently this Qwohog
and his fellows had swallowed their fears and were about to strike off across
the Great Zeiosi Sea. They just needed someone along who wasn't averse to
maybe getting in the saltwater.
"Isn't this romantic?" Solum'ke whispered, interrupting my musings. She
demurely leaned against the rail and stared at three of Zelos II'S moons. They
hung low in the sky, practically touching the sea. "The moons, the water, the
breeze across my skin. Truly romantic."
"Not if you're a Zeiosian," I said as I moved closer and placed my hand
on the small of her back. "Right now it's midmorning, and under any other
circumstance you couldn't see those moons. The fourth moon's aligned with the
sun. The natives are superstitious enough as it is about the moons and night
and day. But on this particular day their behavior is extreme-or so I can tell
from the datachips I've skimmed. No wonder K'zk couldn't get any of the
natives to come with him. Suicides, insanity, unfounded hysteria. In fact..."
"All right," she said flatly, the whimsy suddenly gone from her voice.
"It's an eclipse. Nothing romantic about an eclipse, huh? At least not to you.
Hysteria. Such a romantic word."
"The Day of the Sepulchral Night," I said, thinking I should say
something to get the mood back. I shouldn't have gotten analytical on her.
"Not romantic in and of itself, certainly. But everything's romantic-comand
perfect- - when you're with me."
She grinned, revealing a pearly row of wide, blunt teeth, and settled
against me. "I'm so glad we came to this place."
I kept my pheromones in control, smiled, and thought about my credits,
which were continuing to evaporate on sail barge rent with each kilometer of
sea we crossed. "Nowhere else could we have seen this day of night," I
answered as I held her close.
The Zeiosians' culture is wrapped around day and night-we both learned
that our first day on the planet. Light is good, darkness is bad, according to
their philosophy. And during this extremely rare eclipse, the natives lock
themselves indoors in abject terror. The cantinas and casinos close, the spas
are boarded up, and only non-Zelosian ships in the port come and go. Even I
had to admit the morning sky looked a little eerie.
The reflection of the three full moons, a sallow blue, a pallid violet,
and a glimmering green a shade darker than K'zk the Qwohog, hit the small
waves, sending patterns of light dancing toward the prow and the horizon.
I squinted at a spot far in front of us. Something was breaking up the
light show.
"Wreck off starboard!" one of the four Qwohog crewmen called. It was a
scant crew, the Zeiosians who worked the barge taking the day off to hide. My
rent had paid for the craft only-K'zk provided the crew.
"There, K'zk!" a stocky Qwohog shouted. "That wave skimmer's busted good.
Mst've run aground on the rocks!" The Qwohog gestured wildly toward jagged
shards of hull that floated on the dark water, scattered amid bits of torn
sail and rigging.
A coral spike jutted defiantly out of the center of the refuse. The
ruined wave-skimmer's masthead, a remarkably buxom Zeiosian woman, was caught
wave. There were bodies, most bobbing facedown, the life long since seeped out
of them. A few men were draped over the larger pieces of hull and might still
be alive. It was impossible to tell from this distance, and the matter was
becoming moot. I spied a tiny dome-shaped pate cut through the water-melk. The
scaly rodent-sized beast rose, rolled its eyes back and opened its mouth. In
an instant it had begun to feast on one of the possible survivors. Other melk
were appearing, about two dozen I guessed. I imagined the waves, painted black
by the eclipse, were becoming tinted red with blood.
K'zk padded toward us and peered toward the coral spike and slowly shook
his head. "Too many shoals around here. Tide's too low. Any skimmer captain
worth his water would have known better, wouldn't have taken a skimmer into
^the parts." He ran his slender fingers across his scales. "Lower the sails?"
he called through his mask. "Hold our position! I don't want us drifting any
closer." Softer, he said to the closest Qwohog, "Take a sail raft over. See if
there might be any survivors. I'll not risk this barge going into ^th shallows
for any man. Diergu-Rea, do you mind going with him? Little shorthanded
because of the eclipse, you know."
I scowled. I didn't like the water, but I knew how to swim, so I wasn't
afraid of hopping in a little sail raft. But I didn't want our captain to
spend the rest of the day picking through bloating bodies. With so many melk
feasting, the odds of finding someone alive were about as great as finding a
veelgeg in a kemlish pulled from Kryndyn's deep bay. Nil, in other words. I
wasn't worried about the melk looking to me for dinner. With so much flesh in
the water, they'd leave the sail raft alone. What worried me was the waste of
time.
We were here to find Zeiosian's Chine-or not find it, more likely-and
return to the relative safety of the Kryndyn spaceport. I thought about
voicing my objection, since I was financing this little trip, but one of the
Qwohogs cut me off.
"Found a couple of live ones, K'zk!" An alert Qwohog had a pair of
macrobinoculars pressed to his eyes and trained on the water. He was gesturing
with a spindly arm.
I let out a deep breath and headed toward the sail raft. "Yeah, I'll go."
"Me, too," Solum'ke added excitedly. Her pheromones told me she was
honestly anxious to help.
We climbed into the raft, reached for the syntherope dispenser to lower
it a bit, then we kicked on the repulsorlift switch. The tiny craft settled
about a half a meter above the water. I glanced back at K'zk, who was checking
over the barge's repulsorlift unit.
Our Qwohog mate guided the sail raft among the refuse. From the looks of
the broken deck plates and the floating, bent mast, I guessed the wave-skimmer
had been a little less than half the size of the sail barge. Its lift
mechanism probably wasn't powerful enough to float it high above the spires,
and hence the skimmer had struck one and become crippled.
The smell of t
he bodies wasn't strong yet, suggesting the men probably
died around dawn. Still, it was enough to make Solum'ke wrinkle her pretty
nostrils. She pointed toward the two men the Qwohog had miraculously spotted.
Humans, not Zeiosians like most of the unfortunates facedown in the water.
They were clinging desperately to a couple of cargo crates lashed to another
coral spike. It kept them out of the water and away from melk, but it was a
precarious perch. The men waved frantically and called to us. The sail raft
scraped against a ridge edging just above the surface as we made our way
toward them. I glanced over the side, the moonlight revealing a shallow reef.
I could've stretched my arm over the side and touched it if I weren't afraid a
melk would bite my hand off. If we'd taken the sail barge in to rescue these
men, we might've run aground, too, and been melk food.
As we pulled alongside the crates, I helped the survivors into the sail
raft. They were pale men with dark brown hair that was matted with blood.
Their features hinted that they were Corellian-far from our home, but not at
all that far from the Corellian corvette that was in port. If they were from
that ship, they might be our free ride out of here-transportation in exchange
for our saving their lives.
The older one looked to be in worse shape. His lip was split, and a deep
gash along his leg was swelling, probably becoming infected. It looked like a
melk had bit him and spit him back out. A primitive gaffhook at his side was
crusted with blood and made me wonder if he had managed to take a piece out of
the reptile.
"Thank the moons someone saw us," the younger man said. "We'd have been
dead by evening if you hadn't come along."
"Anyone else alive?" Solum'ke asked.
The pair shook their heads and found a spot in the center of the sail
raft, settling heavily onto the seat. "They're sleeping in the bellies of the
melk," the eldest said. He extended his hand to me, and I shook it. It was
terribly cold. He'd been in the water a while. He introduced himself as
Hanugar, and the younger survivor as Sevik.
"What happened?" I found myself asking.
"A coral reef and a low tide because of the eclipse," Hanugar said. "The
wave-skimmer we rented struck it late last night. Cracked the hull open and
ruined the repulsorlift mechanism. It was a good ship, but the captain was
nervous, wanting to get home before the Day of the Sepulchral Night. When we
hit, we took on water too fast to do anything to save her."
"What were you doing so far from the coast?" Solum'ke wondered aloud.
Sevik shrugged. "Sightseeing. The regular tourist stuff."
The Qwohog steered the sail raft back to the barge, while we listened to
Hanugar and Sevik explain how they were barely able to tie the cargo
containers together and hang onto a coral spike to escape being melk bait.
They seemed genuinely thankful for the rescue, and volunteered to pay for our
passage offworld. My hunch was right. They were from the big corvette in port.
Once on deck, Solum'ke looked over the Corellians' wounds. She has a
knack for fashioning poultices and bandages-Sriluur knows she's had to bandage
me plenty of times after I ended up on the wrong end of a cantina fight.
"What brought you out here so late at night?" Sevik asked us. It was a
fair question-we'd asked it of him.
"Sightseeing. The regular tourist stuff," Solum'ke replied.
"Honeymooning," I whispered in answer so softly that he couldn't hear. I
grinned and turned away, knowing Solum'ke wouldn't tell the Corellians the
real reason we were out here-hunting for treasure that according to K'zk was
buried in Zeiosian's Chine.
From somewhere behind me, I heard K'zk order one of his fellows to bring
the Corellians some food. As the pair devoured the meal, I listened to their
idle banter. K'zk was telling them we were heading south, thinking about
skimming toward the Bryndas Islands where the more exotic spas could be found.
The Qwohog sounded convincing. Ha! I thought to myself. He had tried to
convince the Zeiosians at the restaurant to come out on this fool treasure
hunt with him. But they'd have nothing to do with it because of the eclipse.
Then he turned his charms on Solum'ke and succeeded. Treasure appealed to her.
I heard the flap of the sails rising and billowing above me, the rev of
the repulsorlift engine. Time to be on our way again.
K'zk had told us he couldn't go after the treasure himself. It was the
problem with saltwater. He couldn't breathe it, and being submerged in it
could make his skin blister. Going after the treasure might entail getting
wet-and hence his need for someone to help him. He said we'd split whatever we
found fifty-fifty.
I felt the barge veer to the right to avoid another dangerous coral
ridge.
K'zk claimed that according to Zeiosian legend, during the Day of the
Sepulchral Night the tides would be at their lowest point. Several miles
offshore of the main continent, the crest of the sunken mountain ridge called
Zeiosian's Chine would poke above the waves. Supposedly great wealth rested
within a cave inside the crest-treasure that once belonged to a merchant
prince. According to the legend, nearly two hundred years ago during another
rare eclipse, the prince's ship was caught in Zeios's gravity well and pulled
into the atmosphere and crashed into the chine. The prince survived and
directed his men to bury his treasure in a cave along the ridge. He intended
to make a raft of part of his ruined ship, sail into a port, and purchase a
ship that would take him back to his treasure and then offworld.
But according to the legend, he drowned before he got to shore. The melk
probably ate him. And in the decades in between and since, no one had
recovered the prince's treasure. Not the Zeiosians, because they wouldn't go
out during the Day of the Sepulchral Night. And not the tourists, because the
legend was supposedly a closely guarded secret. K'zk wouldn't say how he came
by the tale.
"The chine, K'zk! I see Zeiosian's Chine!" one of the Qwohogs roared
through his vocalizer mask.
I skeptically peered over the rail. Nothing but choppy water. I couldn't
see what the Qwohog was so excited about.
"K'zk?" I heard a Qwohog prompt. "We goin' in?"
I felt the sail barge ease forward, then I looked past the bowsprit.
There, a couple hundred yards out, something edged above the waves. At first
glance I thought it was the spiny backbone of some great sea creature. I felt
my hand drift to my blaster. But the backbone didn't move, and I relaxed a
little. It was nothing more than another coral ridge.
Solum'ke was at my side. She had left Sevik and Harm gar and had silendy
snuck up behind me. "This has to be it," she breathed. "This has to be
Zeiosian's Chine."
"You don't know that," I gently warned. "There's lots of coral ridges
around here and..."
Her dark eyes sparkled and her wide mouth fell open as we neared the
ridge. The moons illuminated the peaks that jutted above the surface about a
dozen feet or so. There were
a few deep shadows amid the rocks- - caves, I
figured. The largest was round, like the eye of some immense beast, and it was
toward the top. The smallest were just above the surface of the waves.
I heard the sails being lowered and the hum of the repulsorlift engine
dropped to a whisper.
K'zk quickly explained he didn't want to chance the sail barge's hull on
finding any dark rocks hiding just above the surface, said he didn't want it
ending up like the Corellians' wave-skimmer.
"The legend of Zeiosian's Chine," Sevik whisded.
"That's what you were out here after, wasn't it?" Solum'ke asked him.
The Corellian nodded. "Yeah, tourist stuff - comj like you."
"Wonder what we'll find?" she mused aloud.
I shook my head. "It's a ridge, nothing more, with a few caves in it."
"The prince's treasure's in one of the caves," Solum'ke said. "Etren
crystals as big as my fist, the legend says."
"If this is the right ridge, and if the legend about the merchant prince
is true," I cautioned. "But the treasure might be gone-if there was any to
begin With. Sevik and Hanugar are evidence enough we're not the only treasure
hunters on the planet. And don't forget, a lot of years have passed. Sol,
don't be too hopeful about this." My words and my pheromones were doing
nothing to dampen her enthusiasm.
"Take the sail raft in as close as you can." K'zk had moved up behind us.
"Whatever you find-put in these sacks. Don't try to hide anything from me.
We'll split it fifty-fifty."