Oshenerth (13 page)

Oxothyr stared at the troubled merson. “What about you, hunter?”

“Just because I’m not going off on some wild expedition doesn’t mean I can’t be of use.”

Two of the shaman’s remaining tentacles waved disinterestedly. “There is no need to involve yourself, Chachel. Your attitude is well known and your opinion has been noted. You need not trouble yourself further.” Pushing water from his siphon, the mage used his bulk to edge the merson out of his path. “I’m sure you’ll find ways of keeping yourself informed as to the eventual outcome of this solemn endeavor.” Escorting both cuttlefish and changeling, he accelerated through the tunnel exit.

Chachel had to fin hard to catch up to them. “Alright then, all right!”

Oxothyr slowed. “What is ‘all right’?” He inquired patiently, betraying no advance knowledge of possible responses.

Lowering his eyes and not quite sure why he was doing what he was doing, the hunter muttered sullenly, “I’ll come too, I guess.”

“I knew you would!” Jetting over to him, the ever-optimistic Glint tried to wrap half a dozen tentacles around his friend’s face in order to give him a peck on the cheek. Swatting at the questing arms, Chachel fought off the embrace.

“That’s very good of you.” Oxothyr’s voice was dignified as ever. Held loosely in one of his arms, Irina smiled at the hunter. Angry at himself and feeling that he had somehow been adroitly maneuvered against his will into helping his fellow citizens, Chachel turned and kicked hard for the exit.

“Someone has to come along to make sure the changeling doesn’t endanger anyone else by doing something stupid!”

Already used to the merson’s bad-tempered mind-set and constant carping a silent Irina watched him go. His persona was as unappealing, she decided, as his legs were good.

— IX —

Hovering in respectful silence within the meeting hall that had been carved from beneath a high arch of rock and coral, the Sandrift village council listened in silence to Oxothyr’s presentation. When the shaman finished, he was peppered with questions from several of the representatives. These were more perfunctory than heartfelt, as the majority of those present were shocked and enraged by what had apparently befallen their neighbors to the north. At the conclusion of the emergency meeting, multiple shouts of “To arms!” and “Revenge!” resounded through the warm water.

Preparations for a response proceeded apace. They did not include Oxothyr, who together with his assistants had arrangements of his own to make. They did not involve Chachel, who hung back in the murky depths of his cave and brooded on the inexplicable decision that had resulted in his moment of uncharacteristic altruism. They did, however, engage the attention of a fascinated Irina.

As an outsider who had volunteered to participate in the expedition to aid Siriswirll, she was granted grudging acceptance even by those who remained suspicious of her presence and possible motives. As such, she was not challenged as she moved around both halves of the village observing the measures that were being taken. Though unable to contribute directly to the somber, disciplined preparations, she was allowed to swim freely anywhere she wished.

Having previously caught sight only of spears and knives, she was surprised to encounter several dozen archers loading their weapons into large carryalls. The latter had been fashioned from treated, flexible sea fans that had been fastened together. Fashioned from baleen that had been salvaged from the skeletons of dead whales, bows were sleek and extremely flexible. Bowstrings came from a variety of organic sources. Arrows of sharpened bone were common, as was a dizzying variety of tridents, halberds, and related long weapons. Some of these were tipped with vicious sea urchin spines or lined with embedded razor clams.

Though she looked for clubs, maces, knobkerries, and their ilk, she saw none. While not a fighter, much less someone with personal experience of such weapons, their absence did not surprise her. She might not know much about primitive weaponry, but she knew water. You could stab through it fairly effectively, whereas trying to swing an object of any mass would meet only increasing resistance the wider the arc it encompassed. Underwater a rapier would be far more effective than a broadsword. Not that she viewed the available arsenal with any proprietary interest. She had decided that if caught up in any confrontation she would stay back and rely on her knife for defense.

It was a small but impressive company that finally set out. Cheered along and waved farewell by those too young or too old to participate, the relief force consisted of more than two hundred male and female mersons. They were accompanied by half again as many manyarms. In addition to octopods and cuttlefish of varying size, there were species of squid larger than any she had yet seen. Some had bodies four feet long, as big around as her own, with arms that trailed behind them another twelve feet. Cylinders of pure muscle, they were given the task of hauling most of the expedition’s supplies. Though they could sense direction quite well while traveling backward, while they were occupied in pulling the supply carryalls they often relied on others to assure them that they were indeed headed in the right direction.

Sweeping out of the canyon in a flat, winding column, the soldiers of Sandrift followed the lead of half a dozen scouts both merson and manyarm. With the mersons singing songs of defiance while the manyarms produced an accompanying lightshow by alternating colors and patterns in time to the music, Irina found herself dazzled by the martial display. She was not the only one. A familiar cuttlefish ascended directly in front of her.

“Isn’t it grand, oh isn’t it so grand!” Weaving up and down in the water, Glint generated small pressure waves in his wake as he stayed just ahead of her.

Irina could hardly deny it. Spectacle was spectacle, the last thing she wanted to do was rain on the cuttlefish’s parade (though that could be done only in a figurative sense), and in any case, it would not have been polite. Still, she could not keep from adding somewhat circuitously, “Parades are what armed forces do best.”

“‘Armed forces’?” Glint eyed her with interest. “Is that what you call soldiers where you come from?” He spread his ten arms as wide as possible; a blossom with suckers. “I like it.”

“It doesn’t mean forces with lots of arms,” she tried to explain, “it means—oh, never mind.” As she swam behind him, quietly exulting in the extra propulsion Oxothyr’s changeling spell had bestowed on her transformed limbs, she studied the procession surrounding her. Her present location was near the center and slightly to the rear. The biggest squid who were towing the largest carryalls full of weapons, supplies, and foodstuffs seemed to move through the water without any effort at all, their powerful siphons often ejecting hundreds of gallons of water in tandem. Such cephalopodan precision was wonderful to see.

Something bumped her hard from behind, throwing off her flutter kick. It took her a moment to regain her stroke. She was not entirely surprised to see Poylee swim up beside her.

“Sorry, Irina.” Her erstwhile hostess smiled, an expression that conveyed mixed messages. “I need to look where I’m going. You’re not hurt, are you?” Irina was unable to tell for certain from the merson’s tone whether the query expressed concern or anticipation.

“It’s all right, I’m fine. How are you?”

“Looking forward to a fight.” A hand indicated the multiple bone spears that were strapped securely to her back. “I’m always ready for a good fight. As you’ll see when the time comes.”

Irina stared back evenly. “I’m sure when that time arrives I’ll be prepared to defend myself. Where’s Chachel? I thought he’d be with you.”

The smile, sham or otherwise, disappeared. “He hovers around Telnarch, Kesreach, and the others, listening as they plot strategy. Sometimes they invite him to participate, but he always declines.” Her expression brightened. “One day he will join fully in the life of the village. I know it. He just needs the right kind of encouragement.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Irina murmured by way of response. “I get the feeling he really enjoys his isolation. I’ve known men like that. Afraid to commit to anything. They live out their lives in isolation; sometimes happily, sometimes not.”

Poylee’s visage darkened again. “He just needs the proper encouragement,” she repeated, more tersely this time. When she turned to swim away, her right foot came close to smacking the other woman in the ribs and Irina had to kick hard and fast to one side to avoid taking a nasty blow.

“She doesn’t like me very much. I thought she did at first, but now she doesn’t.” She returned her gaze to the escorting manyarm. “Doesn’t she realize I have no interest in Chachel?”

“It doesn’t matter if you do or not,” Glint replied. “All that matters is that she
thinks
you do. It would be much worse if my friend showed any interest in you.”

“He doesn’t—does he?”
What an odd thing to add
, she mused.

“Chachel is like a manyarm with its skin turned inside out. He has no interest in anyone—often not even himself.” Glint proceeded to relate to her the lamentable details of his companion’s personal history.

Afterwards Irina was quiet for a long time, swimming in silence behind the cuttlefish, feeling little but the occasional push of water against her face when he drifted close enough for her to sense the pulsing output of his siphon.

“That’s terrible,” she finally muttered. “It explains a lot.” She looked up at the manyarm. “It doesn’t bother Poylee?”

A flash of orange running from tail to head rippled through the body of the cuttlefish: a cephalopodan shrug. “She has made it her mission, I think, to rescue him from himself. Better odds to be had in recovering a turtle that has lost its shell. These relationships are so much easier for my kind. Once a month we go crazy, and the rest of the time we are sane.”

Irina’s thoughts wandered back to her world; a reality that seemed increasingly distant and strange. “I have friends like that. But with them it’s more a mental imperative, not a physical one.” She hesitated, suddenly desirous of changing the subject. “You know what I miss from my home?”

The most developed of all invertebrate eyes stared back at her. “Your friends and family?”

“Coffee,” she told him.

Ten minutes of subsequent explication failed to enlighten the cuttlefish as to the nature and severity of that particular deprivation.

She had not thought to ask how far it was to Siriswirll or how long it would take to get there. Having built her spirits up to deal with whatever kind of violent confrontation might be forthcoming, she was therefore somewhat disappointed to learn that Oxothyr and the council had decided to stop at Shakestone first. Not only to ascertain the truth and the depth of the dead rainbow runner’s account, but to see if a hasty examination of that village would yield any useful information about its assailants.

As soon as she set eyes on that town several days later, she forgot about everything else.

In the water in front of the column, the village slowly took on shape and form. Unlike canyon-clinging Sandrift, it had been built on the westward, seaward-facing side of a gently sloping reef. Customized coralline dwellings and other structures descended in terraces from near the top of the reef downward toward darker depths. Or at least, they once had done so.

If anything, the doomed herald Zesqu had understated the state of affairs when he had reported that Shakestone had been destroyed. Obliterated would have been a better description. After squads of mersons and manyarms had chased off the remaining sharks and other scavengers, a stunned Irina joined the rest of the expedition in fanning out to assess the totality of the devastation—and to see, unlikely as it seemed at first glance, if there were any survivors.

The inspiration for the name of the village had manifested itself early on. Eons ago a towering granitic monolith whose peak had reached nearly to the mirrorsky had been severely fractured by some unknown tectonic cataclysm. The collapsed pile of rubble that was the result of this violent geologic disturbance now stood mute sentry over the devastated town, a crumbled headstone that would forever serve as silent reminder of what had once been a thriving community of mersons and manyarms.

Though she had by now come to think of the continually gesticulating Glint as a good friend, she still had to remind herself that his kind had suffered here as severely as the population of more human-like mersons. It was a realization difficult to avoid, given the substantial number of brutally amputated sucker-lined arms that lay scattered throughout the ruins of the community. She did not have to hunt for them. All one had to do was look for a cluster of excited fish swarming to the attack. A dismembered cuttlefish arm, several of squid, another of octopus usually lay at the center of these morbidly enthusiastic piscine revels.

Less often, she came across reef fish picking bits of flesh from a piece of merson: a hand or arm, a leg or severed torso. She was able to cope with the appearance of a still largely intact dead squid. The two-foot long vacant-eyed body had been sliced open lengthwise as if by an enormous knife. Entrails drifted in the gentle current like deformed, attenuated balloons.

That encounter was not sufficient to prepare her for sight of a dead merson child. The six-year old’s corpse was wedged in a crevice in the reef. It had been jammed there on purpose, or else the boy had tried to use it for a refuge. Proving that whoever had attacked Splitrock played no favorites, the small body had been opened up as neatly and efficiently as that of the squid. As with everything else she had seen thus far, this morbid tableaux proved educational. For example, she learned that it was perfectly natural and possible to throw up underwater.

As she struggled to recover from her nausea and the spontaneous evacuation of her insides, eager schools of three-inch long anthias and damsels, gobies and blennies, appeared as if out of nowhere to pick and choose from the rapidly dispersing upchuck. Acknowledgement of their unbridled enthusiasm for the undigested contents of her stomach threatened to resuscitate a tremulous urge to regurgitate. Despite her churning intestinal discomfort, she willed herself not to puke again and to swim away.

It had been a challenge to look directly at the bodies—or rather, at the fragments that remained. The dead boy was the most intact of any she encountered, perhaps because of his hiding place in the coral cleft. Elsewhere, teams of mersons and manyarms from Sandrift were recovering what they could. She wondered what would become of the salvaged tissue. Did the merson inhabitants of this world bury their dead, or their remains? She decided that was a question whose answer could wait for another, kinder time.

Not only were the inhabitants of Shakestone missing, so was a good deal of the village itself. In the course of her stay in Sandrift, she had seen enough of construction techniques and long-standing buildings to know that flattened dwellings and crumbling shop fronts were not representative of some new and eclectic architectural style, but rather a destructive force of unfamiliar power that had been ruthlessly applied.

As she swam through the natural passageways that had been cut in the coral by eons of tidal action she was unable to find a single intact structure. Strips of protective window and door netting clung like shredded rags to decoratively bred staghorn coral. Occasionally a loose piece would tumble past her like a sheet of newspaper caught in the wind. Roofs had been caved in, walls had been pulled down, and doorways smashed open wide. What sort of weapon or creature was capable of doing such damage to coral that had the consistency of solid rock?

“Spralakers” she had been told. She
still
did not know what a spralaker was. She was very much afraid that before too much more time passed she was likely to find out.

As it happened, the members of the Sandrift village council who had joined the expedition were at that same moment contemplating many of the same questions as their changeling visitor, and having as little luck in coming up with answers. Having positioned themselves outside the ruins of the town hall, the conversation of the ten venerable mersons and manyarms alternated between expressions of commiseration for the fate of the deceased, whose bodies had been so rudely treated, and sometimes heated argument over what to do once the last body part had been properly disposed of.