**BOOK II OF THE FOUR REALMS SERIES**
When war came for Azura, Fara of Calate lost everything. Her husband, her new home, her freedom. When her captor - the formidable commander of the Leoth army - saves her life, she begins to see the enemy as som...
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By a quaint, makeshift pier, three small fishing boats rocked against the steady current. From this side of the Gelder the sea was angrier, colder, darker.
The Whitevain Strait was known to have pulled many a vessel beneath her waves and crush them to splinters, the bodies of sailors lost forever beneath her pitch-black depths; only sailors brave enough to dance with death sailed this route. His stomach lurched. Leothine did not sail easily on the calmest of oceans and aboard the sturdiest of vessels. Behind him he felt the agitation rumble through the warriors at the sight of the flimsy boats knocking against each other by the shore.
He glanced at Corryn's Chief Rakshasa. A lean, black-skinned warrior named Golciz who looked almost blue in the moonlight. He was grinning at Theodan widely. 'I had heard tell of the Leoth's fear of the water, though I had never thought to scent it myself.' He covered his mouth and nose and his men chuckled at the joke. Theodan fought back the urge to scowl.
Inside, the boats were as flimsy as they appeared; each breath he took seeming to cause the old wood to creak and complain beneath him. Hood pulled low of the borrowed cloak he wore, he sat still as night at the bow, while Paliyus of Aphelion balanced the cargo weight at the stern. From where he sat he could see the Leoth's white-knuckled grip on the yard tighten as he grimaced against every bump and kick of the wave. The Four sun kin in each boat rowed in tandem, their movement clean and swift, while they skimmed as close to the shoreline as the vessel allowed.
It took longer than he could have imagined to row to the city walls. The Sun Kin sweating from the effort of heaving the Leothine weight, but finally, the curve of the shore pushed out into the strait and the loom of the city walls came into view, reaching up toward the night sky.
He smelled the stench first. Human waste. Unmistakably. More rotten and pungent than he had ever encountered. He bunched his cloak in his fist and covered his mouth with it, Paliyus doing the same a moment later. It seemed the scent had not yet reached the senses of the kin - in fact; it was some moments later, when the stench was an almost unbearable searing to his own nose, that they appeared to notice it. While the Leothine fought to hold on to their stomachs, the humans showed only a down-turned mouth. He stared in amazement at the rowers, who continued to pull them through the water despite the debilitating stench.
'It is only going to get worse, Leoth,' Golciz advised. 'I would advise you take it in.' This time he scowled beneath his covered mouth as the Raksha gave another amused grin.
By worse, he'd meant they would have to walk through the source of the stench, their boots soaked in it, their noses and throats filled with it, their cloaks heavy with it. After bringing the boats close to a large grated tunnel, the height of himself, where the city's waste poured out into the sea, they climbed out.
A loop of chain fixed around the grate allowed for two kin to pull it from its frame where it quickly sank down into the filthy depths.Then, from a wide shelf of rock, they angled themselves into the waste-filled tunnel. Waste poured past them like a turgid waterfall into the ocean freely. Perhaps this was why the strait was so violent? So determined upon revenge?
