Oshenerth

  “I’m asking you nicely.” She found herself swatting away hands in all directions. “To leave me alone. Or I’ll yell for the police.”

  “Police?” Two of the self-confident nuisances exchanged a glance. “What are ‘police’?”

  “I think she means the civil guard,” suggested the third member of the disagreeable trio. He moved a little closer. They were hemming her in now; from front, back, and above, reducing her room to maneuver, to get away. Blasting out so much percussion, the band made it difficult for her to make herself heard.

  Could she make herself heard? How far would her cry for assistance travel underwater, swamped as it was likely to be by the wail of the band? Would anyone respond if they did hear her, and did anyone care? For all she knew of local culture, in Benthicalia this increasingly unpleasant confrontation was a common and accepted method through which representatives of one gender initiated contact with another. Certainly it was no less intrusive than the courtship rituals employed by certain species of dolphin in her own world.

  She was no dolphin, and she wanted out.

  In frustration as much as anger, she struck out at the nearest merson. Slowed by the intervening water, her slap barely grazed him. Worse, he appeared to take it as some kind of perverse invitation. Moving toward instead of away from her, he reached out to tickle the outer edge of her left gill flap. If it was supposed to send some kind of intimate sensual signal it failed miserably with Irina, reminding her as it did only of newfound opportunities for suffocation.

  The merson behind her was intent on committing a gesture considerably more familiar though no less unwelcome when a horizontal blur slammed into him and knocked him prone in the water. Now some in the crowd did pause in their partying to turn and look, though no one seemed inclined to summon the aforementioned civil guard. Blinking at the abruptness of the intervention, Irina was too shaken to thank her rescuer.

  Pivoting sharply in the water, having knocked insensible one of the trio who were vexing Irina, Poylee cocked both arms in front of her.

  “I think I heard the changeling ask you nicely,” she hissed.

  The unconscious merson’s cohorts barely glanced at the confrontational new arrival. They were too busy gaping at Irina. “A changeling!” echoed one. “That explains the strange hair.”

  “Yes.” His companion nodded in the direction of their free-floating friend. “Welenhu has gone to sleep and left this intriguing creature for us to examine. We would be lax in our duty as friends if we were to retire without learning more.” Putting his own hands out in front of him, he advanced on Poylee while his associate closed a new circle around the uncertain Irina.

  Suddenly he was arching backwards. Having slid an arm around each side of the advancing merson’s neck, his assailant clutched his own forearms with opposing hands. The result was a firm hold that forced tightly shut the gill flaps of Irina’s tormentor. The merson thus restrained began to kick frantically. Locked together, the pair spun around and around in a series of increasingly desperate somersaults. Other patrons of the establishment backed up to give the fighters more room as the thoroughly blasé band segued smoothly into another, somewhat faster, selection.

  As he slowly suffocated, the wild flailing and kicking of the merson who had been surprised from behind began to moderate. After he passed out but before he died, Chachel released the double-arm choke hold and swam to pull the last remaining assailant off an increasingly hard-pressed Poylee. Swimming to the first and still unconscious merson, Irina stood watch over him to make sure he didn’t revive in time to rejoin the fray. Out of the corner of an eye she saw a nest of arms come into view: Glint had arrived.

  Gesturing to where Chachel now had his hands full with the third and largest of the troublemakers, she snapped at the splendidly hued cephalopod. “Why don’t you go help Chachel? Isn’t he still your friend?”

  The cuttlefish replied with considerable dignity. “I don’t interfere in the mating rituals of mersons.”

  The male beside her was starting to revive. Extending a leg, she shoved a webbed foot against his left gill flap. His eyelids fluttered and he promptly passed out again.

  “This isn’t a mating ritual, you ghost of a calamari dinner! It’s a fight! A brutal, kicking, scratching, head-butting fight!”

  Unperturbed, the cuttlefish cocked one eye at her. “Where mersons are concerned, it is often impossible to tell where one begins and the other lets off.” Extending themselves, several tentacles gestured. “Chachel fights sharks single-handedly and with only two arms. I am not concerned as to the eventual outcome of this encounter, nor should you be.”

  The fact remained that despite the manyarm’s reassurances, she was concerned. Her anxiety level dropped when she saw Chachel spin his opponent into a wall. Coral was notoriously unyielding. Her apprehension eased still more as Chachel, holding onto the dazed merson with one hand, began pummeling him with the other. Blood from the unlucky merson’s face began to flow into the surrounding water in tight little trickles, like threads of cuttlefish ink. At this depth and in the bioluminescent light, it appeared dark green instead of red.

  Poylee finally managed to pull Chachel off the now comatose nuisance. The excitement over, those patrons who had stopped to watch now returned to their momentarily interrupted pursuits of eating, dancing, conversing, and listening to the music of the band, which had never paused in its playing. There was no sign of any representatives of the civil guard.

  Benthicalia might be beautiful, and sophisticated, and the most advanced metropolis in this part of Oshenerth, Irina reflected, but it was not without blemishes of its own.

  She swam over to where Poylee, irritated and stressed, was working to catch her breath. The merson appeared unharmed.

  “Poylee, I don’t know how to ….

  “Oh, shut up, changeling!” The female growled through clenched teeth. “Can’t you do anything right? After all this time among us? You don’t have the sense of a spasmed oyster!” Before Irina could say a word, the first of her two saviors was kicking hard for the exit.

  Duly unsettled, she approached Chachel more cautiously. At least he let her talk long enough to express her gratitude before he initiated his own verbal pummeling. This was at once less irate and more forceful than Poylee’s.

  “From now on I suggest you don’t go anywhere without the company of a real merson, or one of the manyarms in our group.”

  Did he ever blink, she wondered? Come to think of it, while the reflex gesture was common enough here, it was not necessary. A merson’s eyes were always moist.

  “You are a lot of trouble, changeling,” he finished.

  “I don’t mean to be.” She was not going to cry, she told herself. How could she, when her rising anger threatened to overcome her relief at having been rescued from an increasingly unpleasant set of circumstances. “I’ve been trying to see and learn as much about your world as possible. That’s what I was doing out on my own. That’s what I was doing here.”

  “Learning a thing is not much good if it’s the last thing you learn. Watch where you stick your head, changeling, lest you shove it into a hole occupied by a drunken moray and end up withdrawing without it.” He nodded to where the bodies of two of the unconscious mersons had drifted up against each other. “Or worse.”

  She was struck by a sudden thought. “How did you know where to find me? I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I couldn’t have, since I didn’t know myself.”

  Instead of replying, he just stared at her. The longer he held the gaze the more his expression seemed to soften. Or maybe, she thought inconclusively, it was just the effect of the shifting luminescence in the enclosed space and the distortions caused by the constant movement of water within the busy establishment.

  In any case, he didn’t answer. After a pause that seemed even longer than it was, he turned and swam away, picking a path through the churning crowd as easily and effortlessly as he would have through a school of skipjack. Unsurpris
ingly, Poylee was right behind him. Watching her trail close behind the hunter as he left the establishment, it struck Irina suddenly what kind of fish the young female reminded her of.

  A remora.

  “What are you smiling at? You were in an uncomfortable situation. You should not be smiling.”

  Her accuser was Glint. Responding to the stimulus of his present dynamic surroundings, he had strained his chromatophores to saturate his skin with intense orange color infused with sequencing purple bands, all lit by his own internally generated pale blue and red bioluminescence. It was a sight to supersede any human—or merson—make-up. Among cephalopods, cosmetics were not only intrinsic, they were a biological imperative.

  She turned to face the leisurely writhing mass of colorful tentacles and the body to which they were attached. “Smiling? Was I smiling?”

  “I think that you were.” The cuttlefish drifted closer. “Though I suppose with changelings, as with mersons, a sensible person can never be sure. I heard your question.” An arm gestured in the direction of the way out. “When Chachel found out that you had left to explore the city on your own, he became uneasy.”

  “Really?” She found herself staring at the exit Chachel and Poylee had taken.

  “I think he was more irritated than troubled. Nevertheless, he opted to follow you to ensure your continued well-being. He thinks that you may in some way be connected to everything out of the ordinary that has happened since I saved you from drowning in the void.”

  “You saved me?” she responded.

  “Ah, I was correct. That is a smile. Both of us saved you, of course. I float corrected.”

  She was thinking hard. “He followed me to look after me just because of that?”

  “Of course.” Glint sounded guileless. “Why else would he do so?”

  Why else indeed, she thought to herself. “And Poylee?”

  “The merson accompanied him for the same reason. Why else would she have done so?”

  I can’t imagine. This time Irina knew the cuttlefish would recognize her wider smile. Was he conversant enough with human/merson expression to also distinguish the real meaning behind it? If not, she saw no reason to point out that Poylee’s principal goal in life was to stick as close to the hunter as mersonly possible, lest he …

  Lest he what? More useless, time-wasting speculation on a subject that did not interest her anyway.

  “Are you feeling unwell, Irina-changeling? The look on your face is most peculiar.”

  “I’m fine.” Maintaining an intentionally broad grin, she raised her voice so that her words resounded well above the pounding of the band. “I’m fine! And since I’m fine, there is much more of the city I’d like to see.” She extended her right arm. “As everyone seems to be so ‘worried’ about me—Glint, would you do me the honor of being my escort for the remainder of our resting time?”

  Extending outward from the sucker-filled body, a pair of strong hunting tentacles serpentined around her bare arm. “I would be pleased to do so, Irina, since I am not presently interested in making the acquaintance of a mate-worthy female of my own kind. It is not the right time of the month.”

  “How do you know? You can’t see the moonlight down here.”

  “The moonli—oh, you mean the disc that breathes silver life into the mirrorsky. No, I cannot see it.” Another arm gestured upward. “But we manyarms know when the time is right. The knowing of it is born into us. You might say,” he added as his epidermis changed from orange to mauve, “that the why of it is a different kind of light that dwells within each of us.”

  If only, she mused as they departed the establishment in tandem, interpreting the motivations of other mersons was as easy for her as was the telling of time for a manyarm.

  — XVIII —

  Squeezed into the very back of the room, his arms curled tightly about him, Oxothyr lay staring and shivering at the single opening.

  Though he was considerably bigger than the mersons who had accompanied him all the way from Sandrift, like his fellow manyarms he needed only a small space in which to reside. The absence of bones—irritating, pointy, restrictive things—allowed him and his kind to fit into spaces seemingly far too small for their bodies. In addition, if he so desired, he could through the application of a modest piece of manyarm magick make himself thin enough to pass through the eye of a needle. Or in the case of fellow shaman-sorcerers, through the needle of an eye.

  There was no need. The residential burrow he had been given was deep, dark, quiet, and suitably oxygenated. He reposed there in silence, attended only by his own thoughts.

  These days those were not the best of company. The coldness he was feeling came not from the surrounding water but from within. Something Was In Motion, and it gripped him like plague. The suckers on his arms contracted from the tension and for the most part he kept his siphon tucked well inside his body.

  He believed that his falling internal temperature was somehow connected to the sudden and wholly atypical boldness of the spralakers. By what means, only the Deep Oracle might know. The Tornal had to grant him and his companions an audience. Only they were possessed of sufficient sensitivity to establish the Oracle’s whereabouts.

  He thought back over the singular events of the past weeks. The size of the spralaker forces that had invaded the southern reefs was unparalleled, as was their level of coordination and their tactics. Who was commanding them, and why? Prior to now, spralakers and mersons and manyarms had never engaged in anything more extensive than low-level skirmishes. The majority of clashes took place between individuals or small foraging parties. That the hardshells should now muster themselves in sufficient force to enable them to attack and destroy entire communities was extraordinary.

  Outside forces were clearly at work. Did they somehow involve the surprising arrival of the changeling? Though he doubted it, he did not possess sufficient information to positively disavow a connection.

  And what of that alien chill that continued to afflict him so deeply? Less sensitive to such subtle changes, the others did not feel it. But eventually they would, he feared. It had to be stopped, as the spralakers had to be stopped. And he must lead the way. Always he must lead the way.

  He was tired, was Oxothyr. Tired of always having to provide surcease and solution. Tired of supplicants and complainers. Tired of constantly having to correct his famuli, who were presently mindlessly delighting in the glib pleasures of the city.

  He could let the coming coldness take its course, could release the irksome mersons and common manyarms to deal with the spralakers as they saw fit. Why must he always be the one to give advice? Why must he be the one to whom everyone turned for resolution?

  He knew the answer to that self-posed question himself. They turned to him for answers because he was the only one who had them.

  He sighed, filling a portion of the unlit ceiling with bubbles. He was hungry. Crisis was never well met on an empty stomach. Arms, eyes, and internal organs he could sacrifice and still press on. But if ever he found his appetite waning, then he would know for certain he was in serious trouble. He started to ease his great bulk out of the impossibly small, narrow chamber.

  Others were depending on him. Hundreds, thousands of others, from the villagers of Siriswirll to the nomads of the Halastweraa Pinnacles. Benthicalia itself was in danger. Only, none of them knew it yet. He wondered if the Tornal was aware. If so, he was likely to soon find out. He needed to.

  Time was ticking away like a periwinkle caught in a current, never to be recovered.

  He found Chachel relaxing, insofar as the hunter was capable of engaging in an act of repose, on a sponge lounge just outside the main dining area of the travelers’ lodge where the visitors had taken up temporary abode. The merson was finishing the last of a flatfish that had been seared in hot water piped in from a nearby field of black smokers. The cooking process had imparted a slight mineral taste to the white flesh that actually enhanced its flavor.

  “
Satisfactory to your taste, hunter?”

  Chachel reacted to the shaman’s greeting. “Well enough. Different certainly from the food one gets at home. I am not sure I approve of this practice of ‘cooking.’ Will you eat?”

  “In a little while. At the moment I am nourished by other things, most notably that one overriding subject which consumes the majority of my waking hours. And occasionally, I must admit, of some that are not of the waking.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Chachel downed the last of his fish, chewing methodically. “Myself, I never have any trouble sleeping.”

  “You sleep the sleep of the just.” Disdaining a lounge while ignoring the lie, Oxothyr settled onto a pulpit fashioned of his own coiled arms.

  “Hardly.”

  “I hear that you had to extricate the changeling from an unwieldy social situation.”

  The hunter nodded. “She may know much of the void, but here her ignorance never ceases to amaze.” He shrugged. “I preserve her because of your interest in her, nothing else. Glint is looking after her.” He licked sticky oil from his fingers.

  “I appreciate your assistance. As I have ever since we left Sandrift. I fear I will be compelled to call upon it more than once in the days ahead.”

  Unexpectedly, Chachel showed actual curiosity. “What happens if this Tornal helps us to find your Deep Oracle, and it in turn knows the cause of this coldness that keeps bothering you as well as whatever’s behind the spralakers’ sudden brazenness?”

  “That will depend, my proficient twin-limbed killer, on the nature of that explanation.”

  Chachel grunted. For once, he was displaying impatience and not impertinence. “I guess I can’t expect you to share answers you don’t have.”

  “When I know, all will know,” Oxothyr promised him. He would have elaborated, if not for an unexpected interruption.