Riverkeep by Martin Stewart Page B

neatly along the riverside wall. They had never been used in Wull’s lifetime; Pappa had often boasted that they were sharp and heavy and made of good iron.
    He lifted one free and tried it in his hand. Although well balanced it was immensely heavy, and as he raised it to shoulder height the barb dipped and crashed onto the floor.
    â€œThere must be a knack to this, right enough,” he muttered, trying again. His long arm quivered under the weight, and the barb fell once more, the clang stirring Pappa into a cursing sleep-mutter.
    Wull lowered the harpoon to the floorboards and freed the three others from the wall. Then he extinguished the fires in the grates, placed salted trout and hard biscuits in a canvas knapsack, and began laboriously dressing Pappa’s shouting, struggling body in the seula-gut and fur-lined clothes he would need on their journey to the coast, feeling all the while the torn pages of the encyclopedia burning like hot coals in his pocket.

8
The Danék Wilds
    Bohdan: literally, “skin-changer.” A creature of semi-myth (see also
Greenteeth, Mormorach
,
and
Suire
), so named for its habit of wearing the skins of its victims. Details of reported sightings vary dramatically, but the alleged capture of a live specimen in the Splendic Ocean revealed that the creature is itself largely formless, consisting of little more than a tentacled mass of skull-less head, spinal column, and countless nerve endings. The bohdan achieves form by inhabiting the body and shape of its victims, a process that takes anything from three to seven days (depending on the victim’s size and species) and is outwardly symptomized through dramatic weight loss and clouding in the host’s eyes. Once the creature takes occupancy of a new body, the skin it has most recently vacated is almost always consumed completely by the bohdan in its new form. This would account for eyewitness reportage that describe the creature as goatlike, houndlike, and humanoid, and perhaps accounts for a great many unexplained disappearances. There isno known cure for attack by a bohdan, although various magics and mythical treatments are suggested in ancient literature (see
Mormorach
).
    â€”
Encyclopedia Grandalia,
University of Oracco Print House
    Â 
    The bäta sat low in the water, heavy with the blankets and food that Wull had piled wherever he could find space: into the pointed nose of the bow, below the bottom boards, and under the stern thwart. Beneath the bucket of salted trout was a paper-wrapped bag: nearly forty ducats, every penny they had.
    Wull felt the bäta sulking like an unwilling dog. It seemed when its eyes sat in the periphery of his vision that they were cast away from him, unwilling or unable to look in his direction.
    â€œCan’t go!” Pappa was shouting. “Sleep only!”
    â€œYou c’n sleep when we’re in the bäta—you jus’ need to get yourself in there for me, please,” said Wull. He was alarmed by the support Pappa needed to walk the jetty, but even more so by the ease with which he was able to carry him. Pappa’s whole frame was loose, bones knocking together in the absence of muscle and flesh, a few days having shorn off more than half his body weight. With his head pressed against Pappa’s shoulder, Wull’s ear felt the breath-heat ofmuttered insults and protestations, Pappa’s mouth rank and rotten with fish, their gleaming scales clumped on his unshaved face like the slobbers of frog spawn that bordered the riverbank in spring.
    Wull had tried over and again to wipe Pappa’s mouth clean, but had retreated from the biting teeth.
    â€œSleep now, stinking boy it!” said Pappa, going limp in Wull’s arms.
    â€œCome
on
!” said Wull. “It’s for your own good we’re doing this.”
    â€œNo good!” said Pappa, digging his heels into the jetty.
    Several minutes of balancing and cajoling and gentle