Deep Wizardry-wiz 2 (24 page)

Nita, who had backed out of the circle after the Invocation, hung shivering in the currentless water as the Song shook the warm darkness about her. Part of what she felt was the same kind of trembling with excitement she had felt a hundred times in school when she knew she was about to be called on. I’m ready, she thought, trying to quiet herself. This is silly. I know my part backward and forward—there’s not that much of it. I’ll do all right.

... But there was also something else going on. She had felt it start with the Invocation and grow stronger with every passing second—that sense of something waking up, something rousing from sleepy malice, awakening to active, alert malevolence. It waits, Ed had said. It was a certainty, as sure as looking up toward a lighted window and seeing the person who’s been staring at you drop the curtain and turn away.

She wrenched her attention back to the Blue, who was at the end of one of his long stately passages. But it was hard.

“ ‘—Nay, slowly, Sounder. Slow is the wise whale’s song, and wise as slow; for he who hastens errs, who errs learns grief. And not the Master-Shark has teeth as fierce: grief eats its prey alive, and pain grows greater as the grief devours, not less. So let this Stranger sing his peace: what he desires of us; there’s Sea enough and time to hear him, though he sing the darkened Moon to full and back again. Ay, let him speak...’ “

And to Nita’s shock and fascinated horror, an answer came. The voice that raised itself in the stillness of the great depths was the sonic equivalent of the thing one sees out the corner of one’s eye, then turns to find gone, or imagined. It did not shake the water; it roused no echoes. And Nita was not alone in hearing it. She saw the encircled Celebrants look uneasily at one another. On the far side of the circle, Kit’s coolness was suddenly broken, and he stared at Nita like someone believing a myth for the first time. The innocent, gentle-spoken, unselfconscious evil in the new voice was terrifying. “With Pow’rs and Dominations need I speak,” sang that timbreless voice in quiet sincerity,

“ ‘the ancient Lords who hold the Sea in sway. I pray thee, Lords of the Humors, hear me now, last, least and poorest of the new-made whales, new-loos’d from out the Sea’s great silent Heart. No Lord have I; therefore to ye I come, beseeching low thy counsel and thy rule for one that’s homeless, lawless, mateless, lost.

“Who art thou, then, that speak’st?” sang S’reee, beginning the Singer’s questioning. At the end of her verse she was answered, in more soft-spoken, reasonable platitudes—words meant to lull the unwary and deceive the alert. And questions and answers continued, until Nita realized that there had been a shift. Rather than the Singer asking the Stranger what he wanted, the Stranger was telling the Singer what he knew she wanted—and could offer her, if only she would take the unspecified Gift he would give her.

Nita began shaking steadily now, and not from the cold. The insinuating power of that not-quite-voice somehow frightened her worse than head-on conflict with the Lone Power had, a couple of months ago. There the Power had been easily seen in its true colors. But here it was hidden, and speaking as matter-of-factly as the voices in the back of one’s own mind, whose advice one so often tends to follow without question. “Your Mastery is hollow,” said the voice to S’reee,

“ ‘—cold song, strict-ruled by law. From such bland rule come no great musics. Singer, follow me, accept my Gift and what it brings, and song shall truly have no Master save for you. My gift will teach you lyric that will break the heart that hears it; every seaborne voice will curse your newfound art, and wish that art its own. Take up the Gift, O foremost Singer...’ “

Nita glanced over at S’reee. She was trembling nearly as hard as Nita was, caught in the force of the temptation. S’reee sang her refusal calmly enough; but Nita found herself wondering how much of that refusal was the ritual’s and how much S’reee’s own.

She began watching the other Celebrants with as much care. Iniihwit sang the Gazer’s questioning and rejection with the outward attitude of mild unconcern that Nita had in their brief acquaintance come to associate with him. Aroooon’s refusal of the prize offered the Blue by the Stranger, that of Power over all the other whales, was more emphatic, though it came in his usual rich, leisurely manner. He sang not as if making ritual responses, but as if he rejected someone who swam in the circle with him and dared him to do something about it.

After that, the unheard voice sounded less certain of itself, and also impatient. The Song passed on to what would for the Lone Power be more successful ground: the Wanderer and the Killer and the Forager, all of whom would succumb to the Stranger’s temptations and become the Betrayed— those species of whales and fish to whom death would later come most frequently and most quickly. One by one Roots and Fang and Hotshot sang with the Lone One, were tempted, and in the place of the original Masters, fell. Nita tried to keep herself calm, but had trouble doing it; for each time one of the Celebrants gave in to the Lone One’s persuasion, she felt the voice grow a little more pleased with itself, a little more assured—as if something were finally going according to plan.

Nita stared across at Kit. He traded looks with her and began to make his way around the circle toward her.

The Lone One was working on the last three whales in the circle now, the ones who would become the Undecided. Their parts were the most difficult, being not only the longest sung passages but also the most complex. The Undecided argued with the Lone Power much more than did the Untouched, who tended to refuse quickly, or the Betrayed, who gave in without much fighting. Tlhlki sang first, the Sounder’s part; and strain began to show as the Power offered him all the hidden knowledge of the great deeps, and the Sounder’s song went from smooth flowing melodies to rumbles and scrapes of tortured indecision. Not all that carrying on is in the Song, Nita thought nervously. What’s happening? And indeed, though the Sounder finished his passage and turned away, ostensibly to think about what the Lone Power had said to him, Nita could see that Tlhlki looked pallid and shaken as a whale that’s sick.

The Listener fared no better. Fluke sang steadily enough to begin with; but when the voiceless voice offered him the power to hear everything that transpired in the Sea, from the random thoughts of new-hatched fry to the secret ponderings of the continental plates, he hesitated much too long—so long that Nita saw S’reee look at him in surprise and almost speak up to prompt him. It was bizarre; in rehearsals Fluke had had the best memory of any of them. He finished his verses looking troubled, and seemed relieved to turn away.

It’s what S’reee said, very early on, Nita thought. The whales picked have to be close in temperament to the original Celebrants—loving the same kinds of things. But it makes them vulnerable to the temptations too.

And then Areinnye began to sing, questioning the Power in her disturbingly sweet voice, asking and answering. She showed no sign of the unease that had troubled the others. Nita glanced over at Kit, who had managed by this time to work his way fairly close to her; he swung his tail a fraction, a whale’s version of a worried headshake. Areinnye’s singing was polished, superb, her manner poised, unruffled, royal. She sang her initial rebuff with the harsh certainty the Gray Lord’s song called for.

“ ‘Stranger, no more—     

give me no gift.

Power am I,         

fear in the water as my foes flee.   

I need no boon.

In the Below         

all bow before me.

Speak not to me.  

Speak not of gifts.’ “

The voice that answered her was as sweet and poised as her own.

“And do you then desire no gift of mine— you who have lost so much? Ah no: you have strength of your own indeed—great strength of jaw, of fluke, of fin; fear goes before your face. But sorrow follows after. What use strength when slaughtered children rot beneath the waves, when the sweet mouth that you gave suck is gone, rent to red tatters by the flensing-knives; and when the second heart that beat by yours lies ground for dogs’ meat in a whaler’s hull? Gray One, accept my Gift and learn of strength—“

That’s not in the Song!

Nita stared in shock at Kit, then at the other Celebrants—who, all but Areinnye, were trading horrified looks. The sperm whale held very still, her eyes turned outward from the circle; and she shook as violently as Tlhlki had or, for that matter, Nita. The Lone Power sang on:

“—learn power! Learn how wizardry may turn to serve your purpose, sinking the whalers deep, taking the brute invaders’ lives to pay for that small life that swims the Sea no more; take up my Gift—“

“There is—there is another life,” Areinnye sang, trembling now as if storm waters battered at her, breaking the continuity of the Song. “Saved—she saved—“

“—what matter? As if brutes who fear the Sea are capable of thought, much less of love! Even a shark by accident may save a life—then turn and tear the newly saved! Take up my Gift and take a life for life, as it was done of old—“

Slowly Areinnye turned, and the glitter of the wizard-light in her eyes as she looked at Nita was horrible to see. “Life,” she sang, one low, thick, struggling note—

She leaped at Nita. In that second Fang, on her left, arrowed in front of Areinnye, punching her jaws away from Nita in time for Nita to roll out of their way. But Fang didn’t recover from the blow in time to flee himself; Areinnye’s head swept around and the great teeth of her upper jaw raked frightful gashes down Fang’s side. Nita pulled herself out of her roll just in time to see something else hit Areinnye—Kit’s huge bulk, slamming into her with such force that she was knocked straight into the side of Caryn Peak. She screamed; the water brought back echoes of the sickening sound of her impact. And then she was fleeing—out of the wizard-light, past the boundaries of the protective spell, out into the darkness past the peak.

The Celebrants stirred about in terrible confusion, while S’reee hurried to Fang’s side and examined him. Nita stroked over quickly and brushed Fang’s good side, very lightly. One of those merry eyes, now slightly less merry, managed to focus on her. “We need you—Silent One,” Fang said.

“We do,” S’reee said. “These wounds aren’t deep, but they’re bleeding a lot—and the Master-Shark’s about. I’ve got to handle this. Meanwhile, we’re shy the Gray Lord—and I don’t think she’s going to come back and take back what she said. Kit, are you willing?”

Nita looked swiftly behind her. Kit was hanging there, looking down at Fang. “I’d better be,” he said.

“Good. HNii’t, administer him the Celebrant’s Oath. And hurry.” S’reee turned away from them and began one of the faster healing spells.

“Kit, are you sure—“

“Get going,” he said.

She led him through the Oath. He said it almost as quickly as Hotshot had, tripping in only one place: “... and I shall weave my voice and my will and my blood with theirs if there be need...” He was looking at Nita as he said that, and the look went right through her like a spear.

“Done,” S’reee said. “Fang, mind that side—the repair is temporary—Swiftly, now. Everyone circle, we can’t afford a delay. Kit, from ‘No, ‘ must think—‘ “

They sang. And if the Song had been frightening before, it was becoming frantic now. Underneath them all the Celebrants could feel some malicious force straining to get free—

Nita watched Kit closely. He didn’t rehearse any of this stuff, she thought. What if he slips? But Kit sang what remained of the Gray Lord’s part faultlessly; he had laid himself wide open to the Sea and was being fed words and music directly. Nita felt a lump in her throat—that reaction humans shared with whales—at the perfect clarity of his voice. But she couldn’t stop worrying. If he’s this open to the Sea, he’s also open to that Other—

And that Other was working on him. Kit was beginning to tremble as the second part of the Gray Lord’s rebuff came to an end. The soundless voice, when it spoke for the last time, was all sweet reason:

“ ‘—strength is no use. Give over the vain strife that saves no one, keeps no old friend alive, condemns the dear to death. Take but my Gift and know long years that end not, slow-burnt days under the Sun and Moon; not for yourself alone, but for the other—‘ “

“No,” Nita said—a mere whisper of song.

Kit looked at her from the heart of the circle, shaking. In his eyes and the way he held his body Nita read how easy it would be for him to desert the Song after just these few lines, destroy it, knowing that Nita would escape alive. Here was the out he had been looking for.

“No!” she tried to say again, but something was stopping her. The malice in the water grew, burning her. Kit wavered, looking at her— then closed his eyes and took a great breath of air from the spell, and began singing again—his voice anguished, but still determined. He finished the last verse of the Gray Lord’s rebuff on a note that was mostly a squeak, and immediately turned to S’reee, for the next part would be the group singing—the battle.

S’reee lifted her head for the secondary invocation.

The ocean floor began to shake. And Nita suddenly realized that it wasn’t lust the Lone Power’s malice burning all around her. The water was heating up.

“Oh, Sea about us, no!” S’reee cried. “What now?”

“Sing!” came a great voice from above them. Aroooon had lifted out of the circle, was looking into the darkness, past the great pillar of Caryn Peak. “For your lives, sing! Forget the battle! HNii’t, quickly!”

She knew what he wanted. Nita took one last great gulp of breath, tasting it as she had never tasted anything in her life, and fluked upward out of the Circle herself, locating one of the sharp outcroppings she had noticed earlier.

A flash of ghostly white in the background— Good, she thought. Ed’s close “Sea, hear me now,” she sang in a great voice, “and take my words and make them ever law—“

“Nitaaaaaa!”

“HNii’t, look out!”

The two cries came from opposite directions. She was glancing toward Kit, one last look, when something with suckered arms grabbed her by the tail and pulled her down.