Read Online Beneath the Thirteen Moons by Kathryne Kennedy - Free Book Online

the wind, the fist of his hand around her knife as it plunged forward. The tongue jerked down again and Korl flew backward, his legs like a vise around her waist, holding on, then they were flung in the opposite direction and he slammed into her body.
    Mahri’s grip slackened. Too much, all this squeezing and pummeling. Her lids drifted down, she reached outalmost lazily with the Power and the most amazing thing happened. She Touched the beast, not just the Pattern of its body but that of its mind. Like the native, she thought, in my dream. And maybe this is a dream, so why not let us go, sea beast? Dreams are too insubstantial to make a good dinner .
    And she drifted free, only the arms of Korl now held her, pushed her back to the surface of the water, dragged her into the boat and forced the water from her lungs. Mahri breathed in the perfume of bruised petals and wondered if she still dreamt.
    “Jaja?” she whispered from a throat too painful to be anything but reality. No chattering reply and she opened her lids to see Korl searching the boat.
    “Where?” he asked, then cursed one of Mahri’s favorite words and flinched in self-disgust. “You are a bad influence, water-rat.” He stood, swayed just a moment, and dove over the side of the boat.
    He took my pouch with him, thought Mahri, too tired to be angry, unaware that she’d even fallen asleep until the splash of rain in her face woke her up. How long had she been out? Moonlight glowed inside her empty boat and the feeling she had in her chest made her want to scream beneath the weight of it.
    “Korl!” Silence. She didn’t notice her tears that mingled with the rain. “Jaja!”
    A tiny squeak of acknowledgment. She let out a ragged breath, saw the fingers that clutched the edge of her craft and crawled over to where Korl’s body floated in the water, his pale hair haloed around his head. Jaja tried to squirm out of his arm but the man held him with the same frozen grip he had on the boat.
    “Prince Korl, let Jaja go.” He didn’t answer her, seemed to be in some kind of stupor. How long had he been floating there, anyway? She tried to peel away his fingers, gave up and jumped into the water next to him. She could still hear the plops of those feeding tongues amid the patter of rain and hurriedly untied her belt from around Korl’s waist.
    Mahri had to swim to the other side of the boat so that it wouldn’t tip over when she climbed in, barely escaped another seeking tongue and swore under her breath. She opened the fish-scale pouch and selected a large piece of the zabba and eagerly chewed it, gagged, shuddered, amazed at how the Power now flew through her system.
    It seemed that the coma had changed her in more ways than one. Her pathways seemed enlarged, able to let greater Power flow through her. She could still remember the pain when she’d had her first bite of zabba, when the poison had forged the beginnings of small pathways to her brain. She’d thought she hadn’t the immunity to the poison, that she might die like so many others who’d tried the root. Instead, after that first initial agony, she’d felt the changes in her head, the chemical reaction that allowed her to really See the world around her.
    The overdose of root had felt the same. Only now her pathways had enlarged and Mahri Saw things that she didn’t know anyone was capable of Seeing. Like other minds.
    She repressed a shudder of terror for the unknown, and with the ease of long practice, banished the unwelcome speculations of her altered condition from her thoughts.
    Mahri tied the belt around her waist, more confident with its familiar weight around her, and retrieved her bone staff. Saw into the water, Pushed it under Korl and hauled him aboard. She managed to release Jaja from his clutches and between the two of them, dragged the prince into the narwhal tent. Then she carefully Saw into Korl.
    He’s only tired, she decided. And assured of his recovery she roiled the