Oshenerth (2 page)

“Some kind of spell,” he finally muttered, “is keeping it fixed to the void.”

“Here, hold this a moment.” Fins rippling, Glint passed the dead blacktip over to Chachel and gingerly approached the inert demonic shape. Sensitive appendage tips probed the bobbing body. Taking a deep breath, the cuttlefish shoved his head through the mirrorsky and out into the void. Chachel looked on uneasily.

Slipping back down, Glint inhaled strongly. “It’s a demon, all right. It has no gills.” Avoiding the metal cylinder fastened to the creature’s back, tentacles tapped the bloated black shape that surrounded the rest of the upper body. “This material collapses inward when I push on it. Perhaps it is some kind of external swim bladder.”

“There’s one way to find out.” Holding the shark by its tail, Chachel removed the razor-shell gutting knife from his pouch and pushed the sharp tip into the black sac that surrounded the demon.

He and Glint quickly drew back in alarm as a flower of bubbles burst from within. They dissipated in seconds. But the demon still drifted half in and half out of the realworld. Determined to give it one more try, Glint swam forward, and for a second time, wrapped his tentacles around the submerged waist of the creature. This time when he descended, the demon came with him.

Its face was mostly concealed behind some kind of hard, protective transparency. As soon as its head was pulled beneath the barrier of the mirrorsky, its eyes opened. The first thing they saw was Glint, staring back at them. They got very wide.

“It’s not dead!” Letting the body of the hard-won shark drift free, Chachel hastily unslung his killing spear from his back. What hunter’s spell-words would be useful against a void demon? He could not think of any. “Let go, let go of it!”

Moving fast, he maneuvered to get behind the creature so he could strike at it without endangering Glint. The cuttlefish, however, was in no hurry to release his grasp. As it flailed wildly at him with both unwebbed hands, the demon’s actions indicated it was trying to claw its way back up to the barrier. It flashed no weapons and gave no indication it knew any magic whatsoever.

“Let it go,” Chachel shouted again. “You’re killing it!”

“How can I be killing it?” Glint wondered aloud. Then he remembered. Demons lived in the void. They could not survive in the realworld.

But this demon was different, and it proceeded to surprise them both.

Once it had broken back through the barrier, it paused there for a long moment. And then it stuck its head back down into the realworld. This time it had something clutched in its mouth; a small rounded dark object that was connected to the metal cylinder attached to its back by what looked like a piece of soft tube coral. Bubbles intermittently emerged from one side of the rounded object gripped between its lips. Reaching down with its right hand, it drew something from a sheath attached to its right leg. Chachel immediately recognized this as an object of great value: a knife made of metal.

Metal could be smelted only by magic or in the heat generated by the black smokers of the dark depths. Perhaps this strange demon knew more than it was letting on.

Now that the puffed-up black material that had surrounded its upper body had been collapsed, he was able to see that while the apparition might be lacking in webbing, it was possessed of something else. Unmistakably, the demon they were dealing with was female. That did not mean it was potentially any less dangerous. Since they were always found dead or dying, no one really knew what a healthy demon might be capable of doing. Chachel was not afraid of anything, not even the void. However, it was well known that the highest degree of bravery could be negated by an equal volume of stupidity. So he stayed cautious.

The fact that the void demon had drawn a knife instead of a spell suggested that it was not a very powerful demon. Perhaps its mastery of the arcane was as feeble as its swimming. Staring up at the blue eyes that peered back at him from behind the flat transparency, he wondered why it continued to remain half in and half out of the realm of void. Clearly, the strange mystical device that it held in its mouth was critical to its ability to breath in the realworld. Equipped with that capability, why then did it not descend to challenge merson and manyarm directly? Could it be that it wished to avoid confrontation?

Well, that was fine with Chachel. Pivoting in the water, he turned to leave. When they found out that one of their own had been given the chance to study a living demon, Telnarch and the other village elders would be aghast at his decision to depart. That realization did not weigh on Chachel. A good part of his life had been spent leaving others aghast.

Then a strange thing happened. One would have thought the demon would have been relieved by the imminent departure of a pair of potentially dangerous foes like Chachel and Glint. Instead, she began thrashing violently about, raising so much commotion that it commanded their attention. Together, merson and manyarm turned to gape.

“What can it want?” Glint spoke through arms once more clasped securely around the body of the dead blacktip. A free tentacle shooed away a curious remora, which departed muttering glumly. “Is it not enough that we are leaving it in peace?”

Chachel squinted upward out of his good eye. “See how it spreads its arms. Is the she-creature insisting on a fight?”

Turning to one side in order to see better, Glint’s color changed from white with red stripes to a pale green spotted with brown that reflected both curiosity and confusion.

“I don’t think so. It—she—is certainly gesturing, but in a fashion that I perceive to be non-hostile.” Fins rippling, he looked over at his friend. “Maybe she is hurt, or hungry.”

“She doesn’t look injured,” Chachel muttered. “Though on a merson, skin that black would indicate death. Perhaps it is normal coloration for this kind of demon.” Kicking effortlessly with both his real leg and the prosthetic, he swam slowly up and forward toward the creature.

“Be careful!” Glint’s body turned pure white, a sign of warning. “One should not trust a demon.”

Glancing back over a shoulder, Chachel smiled thinly. “You know I don’t trust
anyone
.”

He stopped just out of arm’s reach, hovering in the water. Male merson and female demon regarded one another. Swimming past at a safe distance, a silvery school of big-eyed trevally offered insulting remarks. Chachel ignored them. One did not waste time quarreling with food.

What
did
the demon want? Its gestures and its actions remained mystifying to him. Then it finally did something comprehensible. Slowly and deliberately, it slid the precious knife back into its sheath. He wanted to comprehend its very merson-like stare, but the hard transparency that covered its eyes and the device it held in its mouth combined to render any meaningful expression unfathomable. At least, he found it so.

What wouldn’t elder Telnarch give for a chance to examine such a creature—alive? If he could bring it back to the village, Chachel would gain considerable standing among his peers. Alas for Telnarch, Heranleck, and the other elders, the hunter did not give a clam’s damn for such “standing.” Nor did he regard himself as having any peers. But doing something to satisfy his own curiosity—now that was another matter entirely. Would the creature come with him? Surely she must have demonic priorities of her own.

Swimming closer, still trying to interpret what lay behind those surprisingly normal-seeming demon eyes, he spoke to her.

“I don’t know what you want or what you’re thrashing about for, but if you like, I’ll take you with me to Sandrift and you can parley there with the elders.”

There was no reaction from the demon, unless one counted what might have been a look of some confusion. Again, with the objects in place over her face it was difficult to tell just from looking at her what she might be thinking. Was it possible that demons did not understand normal speech? She had not reacted to the impertinent comments from the passing trevally, either. Holding his position, he beckoned to his many-tentacled hunting companion.

“She reacts as if she doesn’t understand. Actually, she’s not really reacting at all. If not merson, perhaps she understands manyarm talk.”

The demon’s eyes cut sharply sideways as they took note of Glint’s approach. They widened when the cuttlefish passed custody of the dead blacktip to Chachel. Her gaze focused on the manyarm’s strong, sucker-lined tentacles; she held her space.

Glint began by flashing ripples of maroon and pink the length of his body; colors that designated a universal welcome among his kind. Cuttlefish or squid, octopus or nautilus, it would be recognized as a friendly blush. The demon looked on intently but did not respond with either words or a color change of her own. Chachel’s friend tried darker colors like indigo, then offered up a rippling succession of stripes that ran the gamut from subdued yellow to a bold gold. He flaunted audacious stripes and irregular splotches, dark blue spots on gray, utilizing every trick in his epidermal chromatophoric arsenal of visual communication. He even formed words on his body in the merson language—a skill reserved for only the most educated manyarms. The demon reacted strongly to the display of script, but continued to offer no comprehensible response of her own.

Disgusted with the ongoing lack of comprehension, Chachel found himself wondering if perhaps they had stumbled across an especially moronic demon. Was she inherently incapable of any kind of civilized discourse? Very well then. If she could not be instructed, she would have to be shown. Reaching up, he grabbed her right ankle just above the artificial fin and started to pull her down.

Her other leg snapped forward and she kicked him. The blow was lighter than expected due to the pliable nature of the fin that struck his face. It had a strange, alien tactility to it. If anything, it reminded him of a dolphin fin. While its composition might be alien, the gesture was not.

“All right—have it your way.” Pivoting fluidly, he turned to leave. When a webless hand reached out to restrain him, he whirled angrily.

“Make up your mind, demon! Stay or come, but I have no time for games!”

Glint slid forward. “Can you not see that the creature is conflicted? We are forcing it to choose between void and realworld, between nothingness and everythingness. Only Oxothyr might make sense of such a contradiction.” Advancing slowly, he extended his two long hunting tentacles, wrapped the pads on the ends gently around the same ankle Chachel had grabbed, and exerted slight but unmistakable pressure.

The flow of bubbles from the object the demon held in its mouth slowed. It allowed Glint to drag it downward until it was once more fully in the realworld. Above, the mirrorsky rippled and flowed, defining the boundary between the void and reality. When Glint let go of the leg and drifted backward and down, beckoning as he did so, the demon slowly followed.

“See?” There was more than a slight note of satisfaction in his voice. “Even with demons one has to be patient.”

“Then it is not surprising it resisted coming with me.” Turning, Chachel headed toward the outer wall of the reef. “It is well known that I have no patience.”

Since the preferred mode of manyarm travel was backward, Glint was able to lead the way while simultaneously keeping an eye on the trailing demon. “She swims awkwardly. We must have a care to watch our speed or we will leave her behind.”

Chachel switched the tail of the dead shark he was towing from one hand to the other. “We can’t go too slow. You know how blood-masking spells weaken with each repeated application.”

Forcing water out his siphon, Glint flashed the color-pattern indicative of understanding. “We will reach Sandrift in plenty of time. You worry like a female with a clutch of unfertilized eggs.” He gestured with a tentacle. “Why do you suppose the creature keeps pointing to the strange bracelet on its right wrist? It is alive with markings that change continually and whose meaning is unknown to me.”

Chachel glanced over. “Are you surprised to find demon markings incomprehensible? Perhaps Telnarch can decipher them. As village scribe it’s his business to know script.”

“Or Oxothyr might understand them.” Glint sounded hopeful. “Even Oxothyr does not know everything Oxothyr knows.”

No one troubled them as they descended to the bottom and headed out across the sand flats that marked the base of the reef. The occasional spralaker hiding in the sand cursed their passing, but whether crab or other kind of crustacean, each speaker was careful to keep to its hole. Both manyarms and mersons enjoyed the taste of fresh spralaker, just as the annoying hardshells themselves were happy to feast on any dead or injured they happened to come upon.

The remainder of the journey continued uneventful, except that with each passing moment the demon who had reluctantly chosen to follow them glanced with a frequency verging on agitation at the markings on her strange bracelet.…

— II —

The demon’s reaction to her first sight of Sandrift when the dissimilar trio topped the last reef rise was instructive. Eyes widening behind the solid transparency that covered much of her face, she stopped swimming and drew herself up straight in the water. One arm gestured violently at the village, as if she had never seen a simple reef community before. Despite his interest in the creature, her ignorance was beginning to grate on Chachel. Adjusting the patch that covered his left eye socket, he said as much to Glint. The cuttlefish replied dryly.

“Yes, truly you have little time to waste on such observations, given your busy schedule that awaits fulfillment.”

An unsmiling Chachel thrust a hand in the cuttlefish’s direction. The blow was easily avoided. Even a sick manyarm could dance circles around the fastest merson. The hunter was reduced to striking back verbally.

“You blow sour ink. Do you not realize that every moment in time spent is a moment in time never to be recovered?”

“You’re a better hunter than you are a philosopher, my one-eyed friend.” Clutching the body of the blacktip, Glint pulsed forward. Two tentacles gestured for the demon to follow, which she did. “See?” the cuttlefish told his hunting companion as he turned a pleased purple. “Even though she resembles you, she likes me better.”

“You’re welcome to her.” Chachel grumbled as he finned forward, wondering as he did so why the prospect should bother him.

As shelf villages went, Sandrift was modest in execution and extent. The small subterranean canyon it flanked received seasonal slides of fresh sand from the void above. These periodic infusions of pulverized stone and silicate were the occasion for impromptu holidays. When the slides continued for several days, as they sometimes did, racing down them was held amid much merriment. Clinging to heavy chunks of flat rock, contestants would swim upslope, await the next slide, and speed downward on the avalanching sand while villagers on either side cheered them on.

Hewn out of solid coral, the individual dwellings and places of commerce were as colorful as the millions of tiny polyps that had built the reef. Windows screened with strands of seaweed, sea grass, or woven sea slug innards kept out all but the tiniest fish and invertebrate intruders. Doors fashioned of treated fish or whale skin were decorated with anemone appliqué whose living tentacles were arranged in patterns that identified the families or businesses that occupied the different premises.

Both East and West Sandrift were protected by a mesh of slender but strong coral that reached mirrorskyward to form a latticework half dome over each side of the canyon that gave the community its name. This was necessary since in the realworld an attack was as likely to come from above as from the side. No entrance to the community was possible from above. Heavy coralline gates mounted on lubricated slides admitted the villagers to each half of the community. These two halves faced each other across the canyon. An enemy attempting to force one gate would find itself under fire from the villagers on the opposite side, and vice versa.

In addition to homes and trades, the half domes of coral latticework protected small gardens from wandering schools of voracious herbivores. There, in shaded, cooler water, the populace raised all manner of crops, from sea lettuce to sea grapes to brightly tinted edible fungi and algae. Supplied by skilled foragers like Chachel, meat came from hunting. Except that Chachel did not share much of what he killed with the villagers, and they did not share much with him. Why should he share, since he chose to live outside not only the social order but the community itself?

Though they visited and interacted daily with the villagers, manyarms were as a rule too free roaming to live within the fixed boundaries of a house. This was the nature of squid and cuttlefish. The exception were the octopods, who like mersons were very much stay-at-homes and equally proud of their finely decorated dwellings. Even a demon, Chachel thought, should know this elementary fact. That the female who accompanied them was ignorant of it was evidenced by her constant staring and gesturing at the various biological cousins of Glint who came and went freely from the village. Unlike mersons only the very largest of them had to petition the gate guards for entry, since their boneless bodies allowed even someone Glint’s size to easily squeeze through the existing holes and gaps in the overarching coral dome that protected the opposing halves of the town.

Manyarms and mersons alike paused in their daily routines to gawk at the demon accompanying the returning hunters. Children stopped and pointed or zoomed excitedly around their parents. A clutch of curious, forearm-sized squid offspring shot fearlessly toward the demon, only to jet away in puffs of ink and hyperactive squeals when a burst of bubbles emerged from the rounded object held in the creature’s mouth. They were so startled they forgot to squirt the usual jibes at Chachel.

Merson and manyarm guided the demon across the canyon and fetched up in front of the gate to West Sandrift. Holding his bone spear perpendicular to the sand, his shark tooth-edged sword secured against his back, Seravach the Gatekeeper eyed the arrivals warily as he gestured at the demon.

“I don’t know what that is or where you found it, but you can’t bring that thing in here.”

“It’s a she-demon,” Glint explained helpfully.

“Really? A demon?” Seravach’s attention perked up, though he was still distrustful. “All the more reason then why it should not be admitted.”

While he would have preferred to let Glint do all the talking, Chachel felt it was incumbent on him to speak up. “It’s a harmless demon.”

The Gatekeeper whirled to face him. “Truly? Harmless? Is he-who-sexes-alone suddenly an authority on demons? Not, I suppose, that such an expertise on your part should surprise me.”

Swimming downslope, a school of a hundred long-finned banner fish fluttered past behind Chachel; their bright black, white, and yellow bodies catching the afternoon light. They were followed by a thousand iridescent purple and blue anthias. None voiced an opinion on the confrontation. In common with the majority of small, colorful reef fish, their conversation consisted almost entirely of inconsequential chatter focused largely on group gossip.

Under normal circumstances, Chachel would either have challenged Seravach to a fight or turned and left. But having come this far, he intended to see the episode through to its conclusion. And it would be have unfair to leave Glint to deal with the Gatekeeper by himself. Besides which, the cuttlefish presently had possession of the dead shark, and Chachel was getting hungry.

“I’ll take responsibility.” Moving forward, Glint displayed a liability pattern common to his kind—dark brown streaked with green. The Gatekeeper let out a grunt; the low, thumping sound carried clearly through water.

“I suppose it’s okay.” He studied the strange, black-skinned apparition. “It’s not a very big demon. What kind of magic can it do?”

“So far, nothing,” Glint assured him.

Snorting bubbles, Seravach set aside his spear and worked the simple mechanism that allowed one person to slide the heavy gate open just enough for the three of them to pass. As she finned through, the demon turned to look in his direction. Absently, he wondered what the creature’s face looked like, concealed as it was behind some kind of reflective transparency. He supposed it must be classically grotesque. Regarding her peculiar attire, the Gatekeeper found its design and nature quite unfathomable.

As befitted his status and personal preferences, Oxothyr’s home was built into a section of reef wall itself. A few staghorn corals flanked the entrance while the opening was shielded from the mirrorsky and its light by graceful plates of carefully nurtured shelf coral. When Chachel indicated to the demon that they were to go inside, she hesitated, shaking her head and pointing again at the bracelet with the strange markings. It was left to Glint to pass the blacktip to his friend and coax her forward, pushing and tugging gently with his tentacles while flashing his most reassuring pink and cerise patterns.

For a moment it looked as if she was going to panic and flee. Tilting back her head, she gazed upward at the mirrorsky, visible through the openings in the village wall overhead. Peering once more at her strange bracelet, she shook her head more slowly than before, let out a barely audible stream of bubbles, and finally allowed Glint to half pull, half push her forward.

The short tunnel opened into a large circular chamber in the rock. Lined with frail glistening tunicates and decorative soft corals of lavender hue, the space was almost devoid of current. Cemented to the curving walls, hundreds of shells of evicted mollusks and spralakers sparkled and shone in the light that filtered down the parlor’s central shaft. Clusters of stiff black sea whips protruding from the rock offered the opportunity for precise backscratching. Utilizing colored ink rendered permanent by a fixing enchantment, several manyarm artists had decorated the remainder of the walls with designs both abstract and arcane.

While Glint jetted off in search of the habitat’s owner, Chachel remained just out of the demon’s reach. He hated surprises, and to be surprised by a suddenly hostile demon was a fate he would prefer to avoid.

This particular fiend, however, looked anything but threatening. As they waited, she hardly moved, apparently content to drift in center of the central, well-lit shaft that bored through the chamber from top to bottom. Her eyes were half closed, as if she was falling asleep.

When Glint reappeared with Oxothyr in tow, she woke up very fast.

Fully extended, the limbs of the manyarm mage were long enough to span the entire chamber from one side to the other. The fact that most of them remained coiled close to his body did nothing to reassure the startled demon. At the sight of Sandrift’s shaman her head virtually disappeared in a sudden eruption of bubbles. Spinning around, she kicked wildly in an attempt to swim back in the direction they had come.

Sensing her distress, Oxothyr immediately changed hue from his normal relaxed beige-green to a pale turquoise streaked with pink—the most soothing color combination he knew. Since Glint had already informed him that the demon was incapable of civilized speech, the shaman did not try to reassure her with words. Instead, he compacted his body as best he could, twisted his eight arms around him, drew his eyes back into his head, and murmured a few choice reassuring words. Then, utilizing a combination of natural mimicry and a touch of wizardry, he changed shape.

Grabbing the fleeing demon by one leg, Chachel twisted hard and spun her around in the water. Forced to look backward, she saw—herself. Herself flaunting cephalopodan eyes and tinted turquoise, but unmistakably herself. The incongruity of it was enough to halt her frantic flight. Her arms and legs stopped thrashing.

All octopuses are natural mimics, able to alter not only their color but their shape to match their surroundings. These inherited skills the venerable and practiced Oxothyr had mastered long ago. Still, even sheened with magic, it required some of his most exquisite contortions to twist himself into a replica of the alien being currently hovering before him in the column of light shafting down from above. While far from a perfect facsimile, the resemblance was striking enough to unsettle not only the demon herself but Chachel and Glint as well.

When the wizard extended a thick tentacle in her direction, she bent at the waist and started to reach for her knife. As Chachel prepared to intervene, Oxothyr perceived his intent and with another limb waved him off. Lightly, the tip of his extended tentacle made contact with the demon’s shoulder, ran down her side and leg. The extreme delicacy of touch must have reassured the creature. Straightening, her fingers slowly drew away from the weapon.

As Oxothyr examined her closely, she marveled at his coloration, size, and the bejeweled bracelets that decorated each of the shaman’s eight sucker-lined arms. Scrunched up as near to his elastic body as possible, each armlet was fashioned of different gems, shells, and metals. For some reason she seemed to be particularly attracted to the circlet of hammered gold that encircled one tentacle. Watching her, Chachel just shook his head. Who could fathom the interests of a demon? Perhaps only Oxothyr—which was one reason they had brought her here.

“Are you going to kill it?”

“Are you going to eat it?”

The squeaky-voiced queries came from Sathi and Tythe, the shaman’s sibling squid famuli. At their appearance, Glint flashed a disgusted pattern. Too often, the interests of the shaman’s servants seemed focused on matters of feeding and reproduction to the exclusion of all else.

“Why would I do either to something that is plainly so frightened?” the shaman murmured reprovingly to his assistants.

Chachel frowned. “Frightened? The demon is afraid of
us
?”

“It is plainly afraid of something. Perhaps the same distant menace of which I have sometimes spoken lately. It suggests to me that whatever we have here is not a harbinger of that distantly perceived peril.” Endowed as were all his kind with the ability to taste through his arms, Oxothyr reached out to drag a sensitive tip down the back of the creature’s pale right hand. This time the she-demon did not jerk away. “Truly, the poor creature reeks of fear.” He continued his inspection while Chachel used one hand to brush away the shaman’s annoying servants, who were persistent in their efforts to snip off tasty pieces of the dead blacktip.

“A real demon,” Oxothyr marveled. “I have heard and read tales of such, but never having seen one for myself I had come to believe that they were little more than legends. Now here is one alive and in the flesh, as it were.” He moved forward again. “This is interesting.…”

Using a pair of arms, he reached toward the neck of the demon. She tensed but did not try to swim away. As the tips of the arms grabbed hold and pulled downward, the black skin peeled away. Revealed beneath was another, partial layer of bright green skin and a good deal of pale flesh that was far more normal in appearance than what the mage was removing. From underneath the black “skin” that had covered its head, long hair spilled out. The strands were tinted a startling yellow-gold.