Chapter 26.7

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    Screams brought Talaski from his thoughts, women’s screams.  He ran toward them, and then toward the sound of something smashing through the bushes of the city.  Who was it?  What was it?  Was Princess safe?

    He found the perpetrator at the foot of the royal hill, a man in rough work clothes astride a heavy horse, jabbering a story to a crowd courtiers, soldiers, and Trackers.  The audience looked confused, angry, but mostly scared.

    “What’s happening?” Talaski shouted.

    “A sea monster in the Port of the Grasshopper,” Jesland said at his elbow.  Calmly, as if he had not been running at all.  “It tears ships apart and eats men whole.  Thee people are begging for help from the Royal Trackers.  May I have leave to go and fight it?”

    “Men can’t fight a sea monster!”  Talaski knew sea monsters.  They filled the waters around Bartiese during the mid-summer festival, champions for wizard duels. One must have escaped and come all the way to the Farlands.  “You need a wizard for this.”

    “We have, my liege, no wizards,” Gneara said as he ran up.

    “I’m a wizard, you idiot!”

    “You are the Dajournae.  This is too dangerous for you.”

    The one thing he could do for his people, and he should not because it was too dangerous?  Far more dangerous to them if he did nothing.   Rather than waste time arguing, Talaski ripped off his heavy royal robe and traveled to the Bay of the Grasshopper.

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