As if responding to her newfound ennui, something entirely new and strange was about to present itself.
She was resting near several other merson females, listening to their discussion without joining in. They did not extend themselves to bring her into the conversation but neither did they shun her. Soon most of the tethered or englobed glowfish and coelenterates illuminating the camp would be shrouded for the night. Except for the light of the moon filtering down through the mirrorsky, darkness would descend upon the expedition.
Out at the extreme range of her underwater night vision a line of sapphires appeared, marching determinedly eastward.
Sitting up straight on the patch of white sand, she found herself staring hard into the distance. Her eyes were not deceiving her. The dots of incredibly intense blue light were wending a winding path upward toward the top of the circular reef that had been chosen by the counselors, for its location and defensibility, as a campsite. Risking censure, she broke into the ongoing chatter long enough to elicit an explanation.
“Oh, I forget,” replied an older merson, “you’re unfamiliar with the simplest things.” She nodded in the direction of the cobalt column. “It’s just a procession of hoobia.”
“What are hoobia?”
The female shook her head slowly, pitying the changeling’s ignorance. “Go and see for yourself if you want. Hoobia of all kinds are harmless. Messy sometimes, but harmless. But don’t stray beyond the camp boundaries.”
No worries about that, Irina knew as she finned off toward the line of intense blue. She had already lost her world. If at night in an unfamiliar ocean she lost sight of the camp, she might as well seal shut her gill slits and give up.
As soon as she drew close to what from a distance looked like a queen’s unwound necklace, she understood what hoobia were. Nudibranchs, snails without shells or operculum, their backs were dotted with bioluminescent blue circlets that glowed in the darkness. Only, in the seas she was familiar with, there crawled nothing so brilliant, so beautiful, so utterly defining of the description blue. The organically-generated lights were almost electric, so intense was their radiance. Why the spectacular nudibranchs were marching in single file toward the shallowest part of the reef, where wavelets broke on its crest, she had no idea.
So she asked them. The last thing she expected was a reply. But in Oshenerth, it seemed, every creature large or small was capable of conversing to a greater or lesser extent. Where bioluminescent nudibranchs were concerned, it seemed that lesser was certainly the case.
Neither leader nor trailer, one azure crawler fluttered its feathery gills in her direction and explained in response to her inquiry, “We don’t know. Some nights we go up the reef. Some nights we go down.”
Hovering in the warm, dark water just above and to one side of the column of living jewels, she persisted. “But why go in line together? Where I come from, your kind always travel individually.”
A second sapphire-laden snail spoke up. “They must be lonely.”
And that was that. Turning, she kicked back toward camp. Behind her, the column of thrillingly luminous living blue continued to thread its shimmering cerulean path upward. As she swam, she felt improbably better about alien surroundings that could once again no longer be counted on to be wholly predictable.
Unrequited beauty will do that to a person.
O O O
Preoccupied with her own thoughts and concerns, she had not seen the trio of scouts leave as darkness began to fall. While the rest of the expedition remained in temporary encampment, Chachel, the powerfully built Jorosab, and Glint struck out for Siriswirll on orders from the council members to reconnoiter the situation and report back as quickly as possible. Jorosab had been sent because of his fighting prowess and a professed indifference to whomever might accompany him. Chachel and Glint had been chosen because if they didn’t make it back, the council presumed no one in Sandrift would miss or mourn them.
Guided by a negligible, pale red glow generated by Glint, they worked their way to the west, hugging the sea floor where the natural light from above the mirrorsky was least likely to reveal them to any patrolling spralakers. The occasional inquisitive night hunters they met hurriedly turned tail to avoid armed manyarm and mersons as soon as they were recognized. The one big shark they encountered out foraging was a ragged-tooth; impressive in size and fearsome of appearance but among the more inoffensive of its kind. It muttered a characteristically passive apology for getting in their way and slothfully moved off into the dark.
As morning began to seep through the water and the three scouts moved on, the constant clicking and chatter of nocturnal reef dwellers gave way to a distant and unmistakably unnatural clamor. Though still indistinct, its source lay directly ahead. Plainly, the commotion was coming from somewhere in the vicinity of Siriswirll. To the approaching mersons and manyarm it was at once alien yet familiar. All of them had heard screaming before; Chachel had heard more than most. But nothing like this. Never en masse, arising simultaneously from so many different kinds of throats.
“Slow and careful now,” the hunter whispered. “If we are seen, we’re lost.”
“Don’t tell me my business, hermit,” Jorosab growled.
“Both of you shut up: all mersons talk too much.” An annoyed Glint flashed a silently reproachful red-orange.
When the rising din had grown loud enough to all but vibrate the water around them, they surveyed the last barrier reef before Siriswirll itself in search of the highest possible overlook. Swimming and pulling their way up a steep coral slope, they paused at the very limit of breathability. Ascend any higher and they would find the mirrorsky itself breaking over them. Beyond it lay the Burning Void and all the horrors it held. A merson would suffocate there, if their flesh didn’t burst into flame first. A manyarm like Glint would last no longer. Few creatures from the realworld could survive long in such hellish conditions. Among those who could, interestingly, were certain species of spralakers.
It was the perfect place to try and get a sense of what was happening at Siriswirll. No spralaker was likely to look for mersons or a manyarm this close to the mirrorsky, and at this time of day the Great Yellow Smoker that suffused the void with heat and light would be directly above them, making it impossible to single them out from below.
Finning to the edge of the overlook, Jorosab muttered an occasional curse as projecting coral nicked at his skin. A large patch of bright yellow fire coral forced them to detour to their right and descend more than Chachel would have liked. They were still high enough that they ought to be able to see everything, he assured himself. To his left, the much lighter Glint bobbed in the waves of the proximate mirrorsky. It was not rough today, but neither did it sit flat calm with the glassiness the hunter would have preferred.
Then he found himself peering over the rim. Chachel sucked in his breath. Beside him, Jorosab was equally transfixed, and as he took in the scene below even Glint’s tentacles ceased their usually constant movement.
Siriswirll was built on the edge of a drop-off. Steep but not sheer, the cliff that marked the town’s limits served as a conduit for an upwelling current so powerful that no permanent structures could be fashioned from or attached to the ragged, rough coral clinging doggedly to its edge. While the rear of the community was therefore devoid of the usual forest of anemones, cnidarians, sponges, and other immobile reef dwellers, it did attract swarms of hungry reef fish eager to dine on the rich deep-sea broth that came coursing upward.
The same current weakened and flattened out as it swept over the ridge where the community was situated. To leave the town all one had to do was rise from within a building or from behind a protective wall and let the surge from the west deep carry the body forward. Returning was much more of chore. The conditions also made the village difficult to assault, since any attacker would have to contend not only with the strong current blowing directly into their face but also with weapons that would gain an extra boost in velocity a
nd striking power from the surge behind them.
That had not dissuaded a small army of spralakers from mounting a direct frontal attack.
None of the scouts from Sandrift’s relief party had ever seen so many of the hardshell folk in one place. Usually they were to be found alone or in small groups. Cannibalism being a common and accepted feature of spralaker life, the rationale for large gatherings did not exist. It’s hard to hold a dialogue with someone who is in the process of trying to make a meal of your legs.
Yet these spralakers seemed to have overcome their proclivity for fighting among themselves. Searching the field of battle far and wide, Chachel certainly saw no evidence of it. Driven by a single, unified purpose, the aggressors were focused on penetrating the town’s defenses. Jorosab picked out places where vocal arguments had indeed broken out among the assailants, but nothing substantial enough to inhibit the attack. These spralakers were cooperating in a manner unprecedented.
Battling the current that blew in their faces as they marched forward, rank upon rank of heavily armed invaders advanced into a steady hail of arrows being unleashed by the towns’ defenders. There must be hundreds of the hardshells, an unsettled Chachel decided. Despite the number of attackers, Siriswirll’s defenders were giving a good account of themselves. Aided by the current behind them, one precisely placed arrow after another found weak spots in the enemy’s armor.
A temporary low wall of rock and coral had been erected in haste on the sandy plain outside the village. No permanent bastions protected Siriswirll, and unlike Sandrift it was too large to be enclosed by a carefully propagated coral dome. Even an ingenuous stranger with no military experience would have seen the futility of erecting defensive walls in such a place. While many denizens of Oshenerth could simply swim over the top of such a barrier, spralakers could not. They were poor swimmers. But Chachel had yet to encounter one that could not ascend any wall, even one equipped with an overhang. A wall imposing enough to give an attacking spralaker pause would have to be higher than a town the size of Siriswirll could afford, and defended by more fighters than it could muster.
What the impermanent and hurriedly raised barrier of rubble was useful for was warding off incoming weapons. It was literally a line in the sand. The increasingly desperate defenders were fielding every strategy they could think of to keep their assailants from surmounting the wall and entering the town itself. Those hardshells who succeeded in reaching the temporary barricade flung themselves upon it with a directness and ferocity that was shocking to the three scouts looking on from above. Clearly, these were not ordinary spralakers. For one thing, most of them were at least merson-sized, and some were bigger. For another, they fought with a confidence atypical of their kind.
As for the sandy battlefield itself, it remained oddly unsoiled. Caught up by the remnants of the current that roared over the edge of the drop-off, bodies and body parts were swept away, to be cleaned up by wandering scavengers with no interest in the mêlée’s eventual winner. Though he could not see them, not even if he’d had two good eyes, Chachel knew for a certainty that hundreds of sharks must be lingering far down current. Drawn by the dispersion of so much blood in the water, they would wait well away from the field of battle and when opportunity presented itself, swoop in to scoop up the debris. In a shark’s ideal world, both sides would lose badly.
“This is madness, the world has gone mad!” Hugging the lip of coral, Jorosab edged forward for a wider view. “Spralakers never attack anything but food that is smaller than themselves. They are born defensive. They do not attack individual hunters, much less whole villages.”
“The sight is indeed disarming.” Glint straight away employed as strong a wording as he could muster. “Spralakers are meant to be food, not soldiers. I have never seen any so big.”
“I have,” Chachel put in, “but they were solitaires, like myself.” He shook his head. “You are right, Jorosab. Something is very wrong here. The shaman hinted it might be such.”
Jorosab started to fin forward, over the rim. Reaching out, Chachel grabbed his right leg to keep him from advancing. Looking back in anger, the other hunter tried to kick free.
“They need help down there! Can’t you hear the shouts of the desperate and the dying? The current is stained with their screaming. Our brethren cry out for relief!”
“All the relief we can marshal,” Chachel readily agreed. “We are three here.” He nodded toward the battlefield. “Look at the weapons they are using, besides those they were born to. When did you last see a spralaker armed with a sea whip, or throwing something besides a rock? If we each kill a dozen, that would be helpful to the besieged, yes—but not as useful as reporting back what we have seen here and returning in strength.”
Hovering a finger-length above Chachel’s head, Glint added his own judgment. “I can regrow an arm. I can’t regrow information.” For emphasis he turned dark blue and flashed ripples of red.
The gill flaps at his neck spread wide, Jorosab looked from merson to manyarm, then spoke through clenched lips. “It is hard not to go to the aid of those whose shrieks fill my ears, but you speak the truth out of different mouths. We need to get back and tell the others.” Rising from atop the brain coral where he had been lying, he turned to go—and nearly swam into the giant triton triggerfish that had appeared behind him.
Mounted on a simple woven saddle atop the triton was a single spralaker.
It was difficult to say who was more surprised: the enemy scout, or the trio who had been scouting the enemy. Of course, as far as their respective positions were concerned, from the startled spralaker’s point of view the definitions were reversed. Recovering swiftly from the initial shock of their presence, the red and white spralaker nudged his mount and whirled to escape.
Jorosab’s bow and arrows were still slung across his back. So were Chachel’s spears. The hunter had to make an instant decision: he could draw and throw his knife, but it would have to be a perfect cast. Quick and powerful, too, before the intervening water slowed its momentum. Or he could throw …
Even flattened out, no cuttlefish had as hydrodynamic a shape as a squid. On the other hand, a manyarm in pursuit could change direction whereas a thrown weapon was committed to a single course. By throwing Glint instead of a spear, Chachel gave his companion just enough of a boost to let the cuttlefish overtake the fleeing spralaker. Extending his two hunting tentacles to their greatest extent, Glint plucked the enemy scout right off his mount.
Both adversaries were about the same size. In a one-on-one brawl Glint would have had the advantage of speed and agility, the spralaker those of strength and natural weaponry. But there was no chance and no need of such a fight. Chachel and Jorosab arrived almost immediately after Glint had neatly wrangled the armored soldier.
Well-trained and dedicated, the spralaker’s mount uttered a Piscean curse and turned to charge the mersons. With triangular front teeth as long as a person’s thumb and a thick, powerful body, the ferocious triggerfish was a formidable opponent capable of inflicting serious damage. Chachel’s spear went right through the attacker’s open mouth and past the saw-like teeth to emerge from its body near the right side of the tail fin. The impaled triggerfish fought and writhed on the hunter’s weapon for quite awhile. Chachel ignored its death throes. The spralaker’s mount was as good as dinner.
As for the scout itself, it found itself cornered and unable to flee. Raising both arms, it did its best to threaten its captors. “Kill me go ahead why don’t you maybe you can’t. Touch me and I open your veins!”
“I think not,” murmured Chachel. “You’re coming with us. There’s a council and a shaman who’ll want to ask you some questions.”
Backed into a corner in the coral, the combative spralaker held his ground. “You’ll suck my flesh anyway, so why should I tell any of you anything?”
“Because it doesn’t matter.” Chachel was careful to keep out of range of the spralaker’s arms, weapons that were considerably mo
re lethal than the triggerfish’s teeth. “It’s apparent your people are going to overrun Siriswirll anyway, and then probably kill me and my friends. So why not prolong your life? Maybe you’ll find a chance to escape, or your superiors will work a prisoner exchange on your behalf.”
Jorosab looked at him sharply. “Whose side are you on, hermit?”
Some of the tension went out of the spralaker. “Yes so, you speak correct. Why not then converse? It will be last time to see pulp faces of your kind twist and deform.” He lowered his weapons. “I go with you freely then because I will enjoy final moments.”
After tying its arms and legs, they put the spralaker in Jorosab’s carryall, which when emptied of supplies was just capacious enough to accommodate the prisoner. Below, the battle for Siriswirll continued to rage. A last look back showed the inhabitants maintaining their position behind the temporary wall they had constructed. How much longer they could hold out against the relentless pressure none of the three scouts from Sandrift could tell. But at least for the moment, mersons and manyarms still had control of the battlefield.
Under normal conditions, Chachel mused as he and his companions swam in hard silence for the distant encampment, the spralakers should have given up by now, or fallen to chaos among themselves. But as the valiant rainbow runner Zesqu had intimated, these were no ordinary spralakers.
What was driving them? What power was guiding them and holding them together as a unified fighting force? Having succeeded in ravaging an entire town at Shakestone, an accomplishment beyond their wildest dreams, any sensible group of spralakers would have withdrawn to savor their victory and compose perverse ballads of triumph. Instead, they had moved immediately to attack a second, much larger community. It made no sense. Oxothyr was right for certain: forces were at work here that were as malevolent as they were abnormal.
He found his thoughts drifting again to the changeling. The demon changeling.
Hauling their valuable prisoner, the trio succeeded in making their way back along intervening reefs without being seen. No other hardshell scouts were encountered and the fish they met proved indifferent. Spralakers were possessed of many skills, but a loud voice was not among them. Their prisoner might cry out, but he was unlikely to be heard.