On the deserted island, Javian and Mia led Criston and Sen Aldo up to the headlands to see the monster they had found. An angry Prester Hannes took powerful strides with the group, like a general reconquering territory. “You would maroon us on an island infested with dangerous creatures, Captain?” His tone was accusing.
The sun hung low in the west and would set soon over the watery horizon, but they still had more than an hour of daylight remaining. The frightened mutineers kept an eye on the trees and underbrush, expecting predators to leap out at them.
“In the name of Aiden, Captain!” said Silam Henner. “If we are so close to Terravitae, give us another chance.”
Criston remained resolute. “I have already granted greater mercy than you deserve. And that’s twice for you, Mr. Henner.”
The prester snapped at his comrades, “Captain Vora may be the judge of our lives for now, but Ondun will be the judge of our souls…and his.”
“Up here, on this cliffside, right over the rise!” Javian called, running ahead. He and Mia trampled a path through waving grasses to the top of the hill overlooking the shore. Mia said, “It’s a ferocious-looking beast, but it’s been dead a long time.”
One of the headland bluffs had sloughed away to expose a sheer cliff of sand and chalk, weathered by rains and high crashing waves. The skeleton of an enormous creature was fossilized in the raw rock. Its bullet-shaped skull was as large as a whale and held a mouth full of fangs. Criston saw the bowed ribs of the conical body, the thin central bones from a tangle of loose tentacles, each tipped with a set of jaws and jagged teeth. A hollowed socket in the center of its head had once held a single eye.
The sight of the sea monster’s remains reawakened nightmares in his mind. Criston had watched a similar creature rise up out of a terrific storm. Those fanged tentacles had wrapped around the hull of the Luminara, broken her keel, torn away the masts. Jaws just like those had devoured Captain Shay and his shipmates, leaving only Criston and Prester Jerard alive in the wreckage.
“That is the Leviathan,” he said.
Sen Aldo was studying the creature, sketching it into memory. “It closely resembles the beast that Captain Vora drew in his sea-monster journal aboard the Dyscovera. But that attack took place only twenty years ago. This skeleton is much older—it must have been embedded in that cliff for centuries or more. This can’t possibly be the same monster.”
“Yet it must be, for Ondun created only one Leviathan.” Hannes’s voice was breathy with surprise. “When God saw how fearsome the monster was, He chose to not make a mate for it, lest they reproduce and devour all life in the oceans. There is only one Leviathan, and it is lonely and angry. That is why it attacks ships.”
“Well, it’s dead now,” Mia said.
Javian gave the prester a puzzled frown. “I thought the Leviathan lived forever, the horror of the seas. How could it die?”
Hannes glared at the white bones protruding from the cliff. “There cannot be more than one Leviathan, and the bones of the immortal Leviathan do not wash up on a shore to be buried in a cliffside. It cannot die.” He shook his head. “None of this is possible.”
“Nevertheless, that is the Leviathan,” Criston said.
Sen Aldo interjected, “Maybe some details of the Leviathan story are not accurate.”
Hannes looked angry enough to kill the chartsman right there. “The Book of Aiden is clear on the subject.”
“The evidence before your own eyes is also clear,” Aldo replied.
“I don’t want to stay on this island if there are monsters here,” mumbled Silam Henner.
“It’s a monster of the sea, fool,” one of the mutineers snapped. “We’ll be safer here than aboard the ship.”
Criston stared at the skeleton. The sinking of the Luminara was still vivid in his memory. Because of the Leviathan, he hadn’t been in Windcatch to protect Adrea from the Urecari raiders who took her.
However, the fossilized remains proved that the beast could be killed—and he wondered how many more of the monsters were out there in the seas. Maybe he would have a second chance against it. Even after so many years, his desire for revenge had not faded.
If not for the Leviathan’s attack, he could have had a different life, a happy life, a family. Ciarlo had told him that Adrea was pregnant at the time of the raid, and Criston could never be sure if his wife had lived long enough to give birth. If she’d had the baby, the child would be twenty years old now, a grown man or woman.
Oh yes, he looked forward to another opportunity to destroy the monster. He wanted a second chance for many things. The bones of the creature embedded in the cliffside symbolized the loss of those possibilities.
Hannes wrestled with the indisputable sight before him, trying to find an answer that fit with his inflexible beliefs. Watching the prester struggle with the irreconcilable, Criston could not forget that Hannes had turned part of the crew against their own captain. On the other hand, he could not forget how he himself had lived as a hermit for so many years, and how he had saved a starving and frostbitten Hannes. Wasn’t that a sure sign from Aiden? The experience of nursing the prester back to health and returning him to Calay had also wakened the lost soul, Criston, from his years of haunted isolation.
If his life had been different, if he had chosen a new path, if he had seized a second chance…
Turning away from the cliff, he spoke before he could change his mind. “Aiden advises that even the worst person can change, that a repentant man should be given a second chance.”
“Yes, and in doing so, the giver is also blessed,” Hannes said. “You know your Book of Aiden, Captain—but have you learned from it?”
Criston continued, “Rather than marooning you here, I will take you back aboard the Dyscovera. And when we reach the shores of Terravitae, I’ll let Holy Joron decide your fates.”
The mutineers caught their breath. “Yes, Captain! We promise to cause no trouble!”
“But first, you must swear your loyalty to me, all of you—on the Fishhook. When I give a command, you must obey it.”
Hannes held up the Fishhook that hung around his neck, and Criston did not doubt his sincerity. “My destiny is to travel to Terravitae, where I can gaze upon the face of Joron. Therefore, I swear to follow your orders, even when I disagree with them.” He wrapped his hands around the pendant and squeezed so tightly that his fingers bled. “I vow this to you, in the name of Aiden.”